Review: A Wish After Midnight

A Wish After Midnight by Zetta Elliott
Genre: YA, Time Travel
Pages: 244 (Kindle)
Source: Purchased
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Description:

Genna Colon desperately wants to escape from a drug-infested world of poverty, and every day she wishes for a different life. One day Genna's wish is granted and she is instantly transported back to Civil War-era Brooklyn

My Rating:
My Review: Genna Colon lives in Brooklyn and faces struggles that many teens face in a single parent household where there is just enough to get by.  Genna's brother gets arrested and her sister runs away.  All the attention is focused on everyone else and Genna is left to take care of her baby brother and continue to be the "good" kid.  Feeling lonely and distraught Genna wishes for a different life and is taken back in time to Civil War-era Brooklyn where she is mistaken for a runaway slave.  As you can imagine, this isn't exactly what she wished for and she desperately wants to get back home.
I have mixed feelings about this book.  I particularly connected to Genna's character and understood her frustration with her family.  The time travel aspect of it intrigued me and I enjoyed how the characters in both eras fit their time perfectly and made for some interesting reading.  Ultimately though, this seemed like two separate books that were thrown together at the last minute for no rhyme or reason.  The reason for the time travel was flimsy at best.  I'm not sure there was a clear message in either world.  And when she traveled through time, it didn't seem to serve any purpose, except maybe to tell her to never make wishes.  Once there the story went on and I kept expecting more.  I kept expecting her presence to mean something.  I expected her to make an impact.  But it was truly Genna treading water until she could find a way back home.
There is a romance element here but I didn't like him.  I was most disappointed at the end because I expected a conclusion of sorts.  An explanation maybe?  But I didn't get one.  There was no cliffhanger; it just ended.
Interestingly enough, I enjoyed the book until the end because I kept thinking that all my issues with it would work out.  So I guess you could say the ending ruined my reading experience after the fact.  Overall, all the parts were there, but they weren't connected in a cohesive, satisfying way.
This book satisfies the 2012 Multicultural book Challenge