AS YOU WISH

Three women sharing a house in Summer Hill, Virginia, use a time-traveling service to rewrite their pasts.

After a therapist conspires to bring Elise, Kathy, and Olivia together to bond over their failed marriages, they spill their secrets in a cheerful cacophony of dialogue: Elise has just fled her cheating husband, Olivia has divorced and remarried, and Kathy doesn’t know it yet, but she’s about to join their club. All three stories are juicy and entertaining. Halfway through, the book takes a sharp turn when the women discover they can go back in time to the moment before it all went wrong by drinking a special tea made from, according to the potion maker, “herbs that help you relax.” In three weeks, they’ll return to the present to see the results. Olivia, a 60-something newlywed, is mourning the years she wasted with her philandering ex instead of marrying her current husband when they met 40 years ago. Twenty-something Elise regrets marrying the man chosen for her by her controlling parents and has a recurring fantasy that her gardener will carry her away on the back of his horse. (A wealthy white woman falling for her Mexican gardener is a cliché, but to Elise’s credit, she looks up from Alejandro’s shirtless torso long enough to learn he has a degree in botany, and he schools her in the process.) Alongside the budding romances, the friendships are in full bloom. Kathy, in her 40s and the curviest woman of the three, worries that the two skinnier women are judging her, but their stories reassure her that heartbreak comes in all sizes—and she goes back in time to change how she feels about herself.

With three stories told two ways, this third book in Deveraux's Summerhouse series (The Girl from Summer Hill, 2016, etc.) is emotional, imaginative, and gloriously silly.