All I Ever Wanted

By: David Neth

Narrated by: Drew Malone Nienhaus

Three wishes, a lifetime's worth of regrets.

Leo's had some bad luck in his life. After his father walked out on him and his mom, they've been struggling to make end's meet, not to mention any hope of saving for college.

But after finding the perfect replacement for a lost family heirloom for his Mother's Day gift, Leo discovers it's actually a magic genie lamp.

Presented with three wishes that could give him everything he's ever wanted, Leo soon realizes that genies have justly earned their reputation for twisting wishes to other ends. What he thought he wanted isn't all it's cracked up to be. And now that he's already used all his wishes, there's no turning back.

©2018 David Neth (P)2018 David Neth

Entertaining genie!

This story by David Neth is about a young school adult boy who watches (his mother and father who has separated his mother work long and hard to keep food on their table. He looks for the perfect Mother’s Day gift and finds an antique pottery that ends up being a genie.
As the story progresses the 3 wishes he makes he tries to be sure they are the ‘perfect’ wishes but in the end they aren’t as he hoped. Of course the twists and turns of a school age boy and girls,etc are entwined in this story along with the complication of a separation of parents.
The story moves along quickly and is entertaining. Great job David Neth!!!

Likeable main character and memorable story.

I volunteered to review this audiobook based on the summary I'd read, and I rec'd this audiobook free in exchange for an honest review. This novella revolves around a high school student who navigates through the complexity of adult relationships, much of which, most readers will find familiar. Our main character makes choices described with humor, empathy and urgency, as we travel with him though a holiday, girlfriends, fathers... and a dicey broker. The audio performance is solid and good, with changing voices for characters. What I really like about the story is that the author has taken a familiar joke, and made a clean, relatable tale that speaks to our current time and morals. We have younger characters who are introspective and thoughtful in our journey; so it's a story that also give us a bit of hope as well.

Good short story

For about half of this book, I was expecting it to be exactly what it was shaping up to be - your typical genie and three wishes story. But then Leo finished his third wish and *poof* curveballs for the remainder of the story.

I didn’t care for the narrator a ton; he has a great genie voice, but I wasn’t thrilled with some of his pacing and other voices. But overall, worth a listen!

Short enjoyable story

This is a really enjoyable story that shows sometimes you already have all you need without realizing it. This easy listening story has characters you can’t help but like, an entertaining plot and narration that suits the book well.

Good kid confronts very strange challenge

Leo and his mother have faced some challenging times, struggling to make ends meet, since Leo's father left. With very little money, Leo is looking for the perfect Mother's Day gift, when he finds a gravy boat in a local shop. It looks a lot like one of the family heirlooms they had to sell for money to get by on, and he hopes his mother will really like it.

It turns out to be a genie's lamp.

The genie, whose name is Felix, of course offers him three wishes. Well, not so much offers. He needs Leo to accept and use those three wishes.

Leo is a smart kid. He's watched enough movies and tv to know that genies' wishes almost always go wrong in some way that's obvious in retrospect, when you think carefully about what you really said. He'd rather skip the whole thing, but since he apparently can't, he wants to be really, really careful.

Leo is also a good kid, and greed isn't one of his values. His first wish is very carefully phrased. He wants to have enough money that he and his mother don't have to live paycheck to paycheck and she doesn't have to work crazy hours. Within half an hour of making that wish, his mother calls with the shocking news that his father, who had stolen the small but not trivial nest egg that was to be the basis of Leo's college savings, has called. It turns out he invested that money, and is now returning the resulting, much larger, nest egg to Leo.

This leads to Leo and his mother talking about his father for the first time in a long time, and his mother talking about how she misses her former husband, who used to be her best friend. In a careless moment, in Felix's hearing, Leo wishes that his father were back so that his mother could be happy again. And he uses the fatal word, "wish."

This is the point at which things start to go wrong.

Leo, and his best friend Genevieve, are good kids. His mother is a good person. So is Gen's mother. Everyone is trying to do the right thing. Leo and Gen don't always succeed, but they aren't acting out of greed or self-importance. They're trying to make those around them happier and better off--and they don't define "better off" in terms of "great wealth."

This is a very enjoyable novella, about young people that are likable, interesting, and whom it might be nice to meet. Recommended.

I received a free copy of this audiobook from the author, and am reviewing it voluntarily.