My Wish List: A Novel

by Gregoire Delacourt

Anthea Bell (Translator)

The #1 bestselling international phenomenon that asks, If you won the lottery, would you trade your life for the life of your dreams?

Jocelyne lives in a small town in France where she runs a fabric shop, has been married to the same man for twenty-one years, and has raised two children. She is beginning to wonder what happened to all those dreams she had when she was seventeen. Could her life have been different?

Then she wins the lottery—and suddenly finds the world at her fingertips. But she chooses not to tell anyone, not even her husband—not just yet. Without cashing the check, she begins to make a list of all the things she could do with the money. But does Jocelyne really want her life to change?

• ISBN10: 014312465X
• ISBN13: 9780143124658
• Publish Date: 25 March 2014
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc
• Imprint: Penguin USA
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 176
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780143124658

Reviews

[Lianne]

I received an ARC copy of this novel as part of a book blog tour hosted by France Book Tours. This review in its entirety was originally posted at caffeinatedlife.net: http://www.caffeinatedlife.net/blog/2014/03/27/review-my-wish-list-giveaway/

My Wish List is a slim but introspective novel about Jocelyne Guerbette’s life, both before and after the impact of winning the lottery. It’s a quiet life but she’s perfectly contented with it. It’s introspective in that she reflects on her life’s ups and downs, the decisions she’s made, the dreams she had. Faced with the cheque for 18 million euros, she finds herself wondering what more she wants of her life–and what she already has. The book is a quiet reflection, which was nice, and had some great quotes here and there that one can reflect on.

Without going into greater detail, it is also rather triste and the last third of the novel was a bit of a sucker-punch: I did not expect that to happen at the end (I was anticipating something else, but that did not come to pass). My Wish List overall is short but interesting and raises some questions about life and what would you do with a winning lottery ticket.