Rating: 
Summary: One of the best books I've ever read!!
Review: Heart and soul truly pours from every page of the book. By the time I was done I wanted to meet all the characters and wished I could go up on that mountain. I was emotional when I read the end my daughter is now reading it! And she hates books like that!
Rating:
Summary: A look at the Virginia Mountains
Review: Baldacci has changed his writing style for "Wish you Well". I must say that I purchased the book with doubt. I have read every book that he has written, and reading what this one was about, I thought it would be boring and dull. His published works have had mystery and violence, but never giving a clue to the answers until the last chapter. This undertaking has a wonderful, gentle style, that reviews the hardships and problems of life in the Virginia mountains in the era portrayed. It has the drawing power from page to page, to find what happens next in the life of the characters. The character of "Diamond", revealed intellegence, whimsy, fun and survival skills that came from knowledge beyond "book learning." One chapter lead to another to discover if our characters could the hardness of life in the mountains. I believe it is a book for all ages.
Rating:
Summary: A deprture from his thrillers, thids human drama is good
Review: In 1940s New York City, twelve-year-old Louisa Mae "Lou" Cardinal hero-worships her father, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. Lou's dream is to become as highly regarded as he is, but she is unaware of how little money her dad Jack earns. Considered by critics one of the best authors of his generation, Jack is considering Hollywood in order to feed his family of four.Lou's idyllic world crashes when her beloved father dies in a car accident. With her mother in shock, Lou and her younger brother Oz are displaced and move to their great-grandmother's remote Virginia farm. The two siblings begin to heal, but a new fight to save their new home is on the horizon. WISH YOU WELL is a powerful character-driven historical novel that provides the audience a look at the bone marrow of emotions of the key players during tragedy. Readers will take to heart Lou, Oz, their mom, and their great-grandmother. The support cast augments the tale with even deeper glimpses of the Cardinals. Although David Baldacci overdoes the melodrama and reverts to a well-written courtroom climax, WISH YOU WELL is a great look at daily survival during a period of intense grief and displacement. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Predictable but charming
Review: This is the first (and only) I have read of Baldacci, and I wasn't aware until reading reviews here that it was a departure from his usual genre. It was recommended to me by a male friend who told me, "This is so obviously a chick book, but I loved it"!
Even though most of the story, and certainly the conclusion, is predictable, I still found myself with tears streaming down my face at the end. The characters are charming, and Baldacci's description of life in Appalachia made me long for a simpler time and lifestyle.
Rating:
Summary: Coming of age in Appalachia
Review: Writer Jack Cardinal and his family are returning home after a picnic. An accident leaves Jack dead, and his widow and children forced to leave the city for the small coal town in which Jack was born and raised. Lou and her younger brother, Oz head for Dickens, Virginia, accompanied by their mother, Amanda. Paralyzed while protecting her children, Amanda has a nurse, hired by friends to stay with her ahile.
In Dickens, there are the townsfolk and those who live on the mountain. We meet Diamond Skinner...George Davis...Cotten Longfellow. A Huck Finn, a farmer, and a lawyer, respecttively. Standing as ex-officio mountain matriarch is Louisa Mae Cardinal, Lou's namesake and the childrens' great-grandmother. Louisa quickly dismisses the nurse, and takes the three into her home. She has never met them, but they are family.
Alienation, rivalry, desperation. Family, loyalty, love. This may be Virginia in 1940; the story could easily take place today.
Baldacci is literate and approachable. Simplicity and struggle run parallel. Life happens when they converge.
"'Well, people seem to spend most of their lives chasing something. Maybe that's part of what makes us human." Cotten pointed down the road. "You see that old shack down there?" Lou looked at a mud-chinked, falling-down log cabin they no longer used. "Louisa told me about a story your father wrote when he was a little boy. It was about a family that survived one winter up there in that little house. Without wood, or food."
"How'd they do it?"
"They believed in things."
"Like what? Wishing wells?" she said with scorn.
"No, they believed in each other. And created something of a miracle. Some say truth is stranger than fiction. I think that means that whatever a person can imagine really does exist, somewhere. Isn't that a wonderful possibility?'"
Rating:
Summary: Different for Baldacci
Review: I really enjoyed this book. I got the feeling reading it, that this was Baldacci's dream novel. The one he always wanted to write. It's beautiful and touching. A great read.
Rating:
Summary: Wish You Well
Review: The story in this book had many interesting details about subsistance living in the Appalachin mountains in the late 1930's and early 1940's. The writing was excellent thus being very enjoyable to read. The story line was very good except for the improbable ending. If you enjoy books about families working a difficult farm life and seeing the merits of their life, you should enjoy this book. It is a departure from this author's usual genre (mystery-suspense), as is John Grisham's book, The Painted House, which I also thoughly enjoyed.
Rating: 
Summary: Virginia Mountain Life
Review: I picked this book up and put it down several times before really getting into it. It just didn't hold my interest in the beginning. In the end, I was glad I read the book. It got more interesting as it went along, especially if you're from the Virginia mountains and can relate to the life style and scenery.
The story centers around two children and their paralyzed mother who go to live in the Virginia hills after a car accident kills the father and damages the mother. There they meet their grandmother who lives off the land and life is much tougher than it was in the city. In the meantime, a court battle ensues over the grandmother's land, which causes the reader to keep reading just to find out how this will all end.
Emotionally it seemed a little calculated and over done, but all-in-all, not a bad book.
Rating:
Summary: heart warming novel
Review: One of the best books I've ever read. He described a vivid picture of the virginia mountains and the characters..well that's where he lacked something. Lou was supposed to be a twelve-year-old girl but she thinks like an adult. On the first hundred pages of the book, I found myself getting bored but when you go on that's when you'll really appreciate the book. It made laugh and cry at the same time. The ending was kind of predictable, yes, we all know Amanda will wake up but we don't know that Louisa Mae would be out of the picture. well, all in all, the book's worth it.
Rating: 
Summary: We all knew Amanda was going to wake up in the last chapter.
Review: Hello David Baldacci, what happened to character development!!?! To begin with, it seems as if a lot of authors seem to get entirely too caught up with surroundings, that they seem to forget about the characters.
I read this book for my senior A.P. Literature class and I wanted to throw it out the window after the first 50 pages. Has anyone other than myself noticed that David Baldacci writes novels parallel to how I wrote descriptive essays in the third grade?!
This novel stars a twelve-year-old girl named Lou and her brother Oz... and I knew that from the beginning. Yet, throughout the book I wondered if Baldacci forgot what it was like to be twelve. Most adults in their late 30s aren't even on the level of thinking that "Lou" is.
Overall, the story is meant to play off of human emotions. In today's society, anything that people can relate to or pity, they love.
Thumbs down.
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