moved to South Florida to see how much greener the grass could be ... and discovered that life is what you make of it, wherever that happens to be.
Maysonet applied the Page 69 Test to What We Wish For, her second novel, and reported the following:
Layla’s mom is in the hospital after overdosing on heroin, and page 69 of my book has Layla’s shitty uncle asking Layla why he should exert any kind of effort to help her get better. Layla is trying to tell him what she thinks he wants to hear—stuff about family and how it’s the right thing to do—but he’s not going for it. So she ends up being totally honest with him, saying how he should help her mom, not because he’s a good guy, but because he’s running for mayor and he won’t want it getting out that he denied help to one of his relatives in need.Visit Melody Maysonet's website.
And yes, page 69 turned out to be a good litmus test for one of my book’s themes—that is, the theme of being honest and staying true to yourself. At the beginning of the book, Layla is hiding everything about herself because she’s embarrassed to be living in a homeless shelter. She’s embarrassed that her mom is an alcoholic. And she’s terrified that her best friend Morgan will abandon her if she knows all this, just like Layla and Morgan abandoned one of their friends in middle school (who happened to live in a homeless shelter) because they were getting made fun of for being friends with her.
When Layla is truthful with her uncle (basically acknowledging that he’s a dick but it’s in his best interest to help her mom), she gets good results. He likes that she’s not bullshitting him. Unfortunately for Layla, at this point in the book she doesn’t grasp that honesty is probably the best policy, and it takes almost losing her best friend (almost losing everything, in fact) to finally wake her the hell up.
--Marshal Zeringue
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