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Back Careful What You Wish For
Chapters (52)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. 1
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  44. Acknowledgments
  45. P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
  46. About the Author
  47. About the Book
  48. Reading Group Guide
  49. Read On
  50. Praise for Careful What You Wish For
  51. Also by Hallie Ephron
  52. About the Publisher

Thanks also to the fantastic professionals at HarperCollins, including Gena Lanzi, Vedika Khanna, Rachel Weinick, and Kate Hudkins. I couldn’t be in more capable hands. And to Katherine Nintzel. Every writer should have the pleasure I’ve had of working with such a gifted and talented editor.

P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*

About the Author

Meet Hallie Ephron

About the Book

Behind the Book

Reading Group Guide

Read On

An Excerpt from You’ll Never Know, Dear

About the Author

Meet Hallie Ephron

HALLIE EPHRON is the New York Times bestselling author of Never Tell a Lie; Come and Find Me; There Was an Old Woman; Night Night, Sleep Tight; and You’ll Never Know, Dear. The daughter of Hollywood screenwriters, she grew up in Beverly Hills, and lives near Boston, Massachusetts. image

Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

About the Book

Behind the Book

The husband’s not my husband, but the stuff is his stuff . . .

Careful What You Wish For is about professional organizer Emily Harlow, whose husband, Frank, drives her crazy with the stuff he brings home from yard sales. Like Emily, I’m married to a world-champion yard sale-er. Every Friday night my husband scours the internet for listings near us, with top priority going to yard sales featuring old books. He’s also a sucker for vintage electric fans and radios. There will never be enough shelves and closets in our house for his finds. He doesn’t have a filing system so much as a piling system.

I’m not a collector. When I run out of shelf space in my office, I donate books to my library book sale. I devoured Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Her advice to “keep only those things that speak to your heart” resonates. In no time, she had me culling my wardrobe and following her detailed instructions for folding my socks—in thirds, starting at the toe, and then in half so they stood at attention. In retrospect, I have mixed feelings about whether this was actually a good use of my time, and that’s how Careful What You Wish For opens, with Emily gazing into her newly sorted sock drawer and wondering if it “sparks joy.”

As I was sock sorting, I came across my mother’s reading glasses. Did she need them? Hardly—she’s been dead for decades. Did they spark joy? Not really. Still, I couldn’t throw them away. When I went to a meeting of the New England chapter of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals (NAPO) and met professional organizer Kathy Vines, she introduced me to the term “sticky” to describe those ostensibly useless objects—like my mother’s reading glasses—that connect to us emotionally. Sticky things are hard to let go.