I think I must’ve heard about Mindy Klasky’s How Not to Make a Wish from a Big Idea post at Whatever. It sounded like light fun, so I put it on my list of things to look for and eventually read it.
It does have very nice theater stuff that is amusing and feels quite real. And if only it hadn’t involved completely removing genies from their cultural context, I might have liked the concept of them as civil servants who are pressured to grant wishes in a timely fashion. But it uses Western standards of feminine beauty in a way I strongly object to, and its plot rests on a glaring inconsistency and a random, nonsensical revelation. It might have been a fast read, but I still regret the time I spent on it.