I wouldn't want to parse this book in a literature class or book club discussion, because it's fairly heavily (and sometimes heavy-handedly) laced with cliche', moralizing and stereotyping. And a profoundly obvious "happy ever after" ending. Even writing this review is risky, because overthinking Wish You Well could ruin the pleasant experience of simply taking it for what it is: a good story with well-formed characters, told in such a way that it made me care about the characters.

The stereotyping is mild and is more to do with use of recognizable "Bad Guys" than with race, class or gender typing...although Balducci teeter's on the edge of patronizing with his attempts to ensure we recognize the fine strenth of character among residents of the Virginia mountains. See what I mean by overthinking it? I just don't want to dwell on that...I want to just go back to envisioning my southern foremothers as strong willed, spirit-filled, people-of-the-land just like Louisa!

Baldacci's writing style has just the right degree of complexity (in terms of sentence structure and vocabulary) for a solid read...it's not "brain candy," but it is not so demanding that the reader needs to be completely free of all distraction and interruption in order to follow the story. This won't go down as one of my "favorite books of all time," but it was a worthy read and I'll take a look at more works by this auther.