Title: Intercepted Wishes
Author: Mike Sutton
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: March 10, 2014
Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal, Contemporary
Length: 7 pages
Source: I received a free copy from the author.
Rating: 2.5 Stars
Blurb:
Wishes are made. Some take time to be granted. Getting in the way is like walking into traffic.
Content Warning: Rape.
Review:
Luck is real.
Brian genuinely came across as a happy-go-lucky teen or maybe young adult to me. He had clearly had a pretty good life up until this point, and his assumptions about how the world works were as naive as they were cheerful. While I was obviously disturbed by his decision to steal money from the fountain, I was curious to learn more about his justification for doing so and about what he decided to spend that pocket change on.
This short story needed more development in my opinion. There were some fascinating ideas packed into it, including the thought that stealing coins from a fountain can affect someone’s fate in ways that they couldn’t possibly have anticipated, but they were never fleshed out enough for me to fully understand what was going on. This was particularly true for the ending which I found confusing and disturbing. As much as I wanted to give this one a much higher rating, I had too many questions about the world building and plot development to justify doing so.
The paranormal elements were memorable and sometimes funny. I liked the fact that Brian didn’t have any warning about the consequences of his actions as this piece was honestly too short for that sort of foreshadowing to be effective in my opinion. Instead, he faced the consequences of his actions rapidly and in increasingly surprising ways. Had the ending matched the humorous tone of the beginning and middle, this would have been an even better read. This is sometimes how things play out in real life, too, so it was interesting to see natural consequences in action.
Intercepted Wishes had a creative premise.