As You Wish

A girl learns the hard way to be careful what she wishes for in this sweet and funny middle grade rom-com featuring a chaos-loving West African trickster god.

Birdie has big plans for eighth grade. This is the year that she gets a boyfriend, and since she and her best friend, Deve, do everything together, it makes sense that Deve will get a girlfriend. This is the kind of math Birdie doesn’t find intimidating—it’s Eighth Grade 101. (Birdie + Boyfriend) + (Deve + Girlfriend) = Normal Eighth Grade Experience. And normal is something Birdie craves, especially with a mom as overprotective as hers.

She doesn’t expect Deve to be so against her plan, or for their fight to blow up in her face. So when the West African god Anansi appears to her, claiming to be able to make everything right again, Birdie pushes past her skepticism and makes a wish for the whole mess to go away. But with a trickster god, your wish is bound to come true in a way you never imagined.

Before long, Birdie regrets her rash words…especially when she realizes what’s really going on with her and Deve. With her reality upended, can Birdie figure out how to undo her wish?

Nashae Jones is a freelance writer and an educator. Her fiction and nonfiction pieces have appeared in publications such as HuffPost, McSweeney’s, Yahoo Voices, and October Hill Magazine, among others. She lives in Virginia with her husband, two kids, two cats, and one dog. She is passionate about diversity initiatives, especially in children’s literature. Nashae is the author of middle grade novels Courtesy of Cupid and As You Wish. You can find her on Twitter @Jones_Nashae.