Having What She Wants

Everything You Want
by Barbara Shoup

“Can you lose a self you haven’t found yet? Do you have to find your true self to be able to let it go?”

High school was only kind of okay – it wasn’t the Best Years of Your Life like it was advertised, and Emma Hammond was fairly glad when it was over. Her freshman year of college isn’t turning out to be too cool, either. Emma’s only company, now that her former best friend Josh Morgan has gone AWOL, is her goose, Freud – well, it’s the Psych Department’s goose, but it was assigned to her. When she finds out Freud’s going to be destroyed after the psychology experiment, she’s got to take him home. He was hers, after all. Freud is all she’s got… now that Josh has punched her in the face and knocked her out. (Long story short: it was just that she was in love with him.

And told him.

It SO didn’t go well.)

When the goose lays a golden egg – almost literally – things change for the whole Hammond family, and it’s fifty million dollars worth of change. Her father’s dream of owning a Corvette – fulfilled. Her mother’s dream of having the art studio of her dreams – fulfilled. Emma wants something intangible, but she’s not sure what. Suddenly, all the things that are wrong with Emma seem …huge. And she’s got to do something about them. After all, money is no object anymore, right?

Who knew that money doesn’t really simplify… anything?

How can you decide what you need when you can have Everything You Want?

Barbara Shoup has written an angsty, funny, poignant novel about confusion and heartache and …life. Read it. Even if you don’t win Lotto Cash afterwards, you’ll be richer for it.

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This review was first published in the March/April '08 issue of The Edge of the Forest Children's Literature Monthly.