Maeve Merritt gets punished for being Maeve Merritt, and the punishment is sorting through the school's trash. Down in the trash she finds a sardine tin. Inside the sardine tin is a djinni with a foul temper and no intention of taking orders from a schoolgirl. That is the engine of an audiobook running nine hours and twenty-nine minutes, and a properly good engine it is, because the wish-granting creature who resents his own contract is a much better comic premise than the wish-granting creature who cooperates.
The Review
Location does as much work here as magic. Maeve is boarding at a London school for what the description calls Upright Young Ladies, an institution built entirely to file down exactly the qualities that make her worth following. Every rule she chafes against is another lever the plot can pull, and a five-star from November 2018 identifies the sympathetic core precisely: this is a girl blamed for everything under the sun, in a place where some things simply cannot be helped, whose parents will hear nothing about moving her.
Next comes a pursuit, and the list of pursuers is the funniest thing in the copy. An orphan boy from the charitable home next door, a mysterious tall man in ginger whiskers, a disgruntled school employee, and a take-no-prisoners business tycoon all want the tin. Four hunters with four separate motives, chasing one schoolgirl across a city, is a lot of engine for a middle-grade adventure, and it explains how the book fills nine and a half hours without stalling.
Jayne Entwistle is the reader across the whole of it. The casting demand here is considerable and easy to underestimate: a Victorian-adjacent London, a schoolgirl in permanent revolt, an ancient creature who despises his own job, a boy from the charity home, and a tycoon, each needing to stay separable across nine and a half hours for a young listener who cannot flip back a page to check who is speaking.
Why Wishes and Wellingtons Works as an Audiobook
One entry outweighs the rest for anyone weighing the format, because it is the only one that reports hearing the recording and not reading the book. Filed in April 2021, it says the audio was fun and the story well told, and that the experience was good enough to send a printed copy to a friend afterward. Buying the book for somebody else after finishing the audio is about the strongest practical endorsement a response can make.
Elsewhere the column agrees about the qualities that matter to a family listen. A September 2022 five-star calls the story cute and well written with enough excitement and reversals to keep the pages moving, and describes it as whimsical without becoming twee. Whimsy that sustains reversals is unusual in the age band, and it is what keeps an adult in the car from switching to something else.
Credentials in the author bio matter here in a way they usually do not. The description records that The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place is an Odyssey Honor Audiobook and The Passion of Dolssa a Printz Honor Title. An Odyssey citation is an award for audio specifically, so this is a writer whose work has already been judged successful in exactly this format, which is not nothing when you are choosing between print and headphones for a child.
The Caveats
Age banding is genuinely muddled here. The listing files it under children's, the description calls it middle-grade, and a four-star from February 2026 reports having seen it advertised as young adult before placing it at the younger end of that range or the older end of middle grade, in the neighborhood of Percy Jackson. The same entry warns that the plot is sometimes predictable while still finding Maeve and her companions compelling enough to be worth the ride. For a household buying across siblings, that spread of two or three years matters.
Names are a small comedy of their own here, and a useful caution about hearing them aloud. The description offers only the phrase Upright Young Ladies. One response spells the place Miss Salamanca's School for Upright Girls. Another writes Ms. Salimanker's School for Upright Young Ladies. Three renderings of one name, which is what happens when a name is only ever heard aloud, and it is a reminder to expect proper nouns to land approximately for a young listener.
The column is also thinner than its count implies. Of the visible entries, one runs to two words, one is largely about giving a gift, and only a single entry registers a reservation of any kind. Behind them sit a hundred and thirty-three grades and a 4.5 average, so the number is broad and the reasoning behind it is not. Worth noting too that the copy still describes a brand new adventure exclusively available from its originating platform, on a title first published in September 2018.
The Right Listener for Wishes and Wellingtons
Families with a listener somewhere between eight and twelve are the target, especially households that respond to a heroine who argues back. It suits a long car journey better than most in its category because the four separate pursuers keep generating incident, and it works for adults reading along, since the comedy runs on the gap between what a boarding school wants from a girl and what the girl intends to do about it.
Households after the darker end of children's fantasy should shop elsewhere, and a magic system with rules to work out is not on offer either, since the djinni is a character with a grudge and never a mechanism to be solved. Skip it too if you need a plot that cannot be seen coming, since the pleasures on offer here are the heroine, the chase and the jokes rather than the surprises, and the surprises are the part most likely to arrive early.
Quick Take
- Performance: Jayne Entwistle carries a London boarding school, a resentful djinni and four separate pursuers, on a book aimed at listeners who cannot check a page to see who just spoke.
- What it covers: Wishes and their costs, boarding school rebellion, unlikely friendship, adults chasing a child's secret.
- Feel: Brisk, mischievous and Victorian-flavored.
- Our call: A genuinely funny middle-grade adventure with a heroine worth following, let down only by a page that cannot decide what age it is for.
Questions Listeners Ask
What age group is the Wishes and Wellingtons audiobook for?
The record and the copy disagree. Category shelving says children's while the publisher's own description says middle-grade fantasy adventure, and the writing sits comfortably at eight to twelve. Confident younger readers and curious older ones are both accommodated by it.
How does Maeve find the djinni?
As a punishment. Her London boarding school for upright young ladies sets her to sorting through the trash, and among it she finds a sardine tin housing an ill-tempered djinni who has no interest in serving a schoolgirl. The chase for the tin follows.
How many hours does the Wishes and Wellingtons audiobook run?
Just under nine and a half, on a title first released in September 2018 as an original production. Its author has form in the format: the description notes that another of her books holds an Odyssey Honor, an award given specifically for work in audio.
