Book Review: Impossible

Lucy is seventeen when she discovers that the women of her family have been cursed through the generations, forced to attempt three seemingly impossible tasks or to fall into madness upon their child's birth. But Lucy is the first girl who won't be alone as she tackles the list. She has her fiercely protective foster parents and her childhood friend Zach beside her. Do they have love and strength enough to overcome an age-old evil?

This book surprised me. When I first started it I hadn't realized that it was set in the present day. For some reason I thought it was supposed to be set in the past during medieval times or something like that? Well I was wrong. Haha.

People really love this book and I can definitely see why, but for some reason I didn't like it as much as I thought I would. I was actually a bit disappointed. I still enjoyed the book, but I didn't think it was super amazing. The biggest detractor for me was Nancy Werlin's writing style. The whole book is written in the third person which felt a little strange for me. I guess I'm used to reading books where its written entirely from the first person and you're totally inside the characters head and you're seeing everything through their eyes. The third person just made it really hard for me to connect with the characters. I wasn't as invested in Lucy and Zach's plight as I would have liked to be.

Surprisingly enough I wasn't really bothered by the romance. At first I thought that Lucy and Zachs relationship seemed a little contrived. I mean sure, they have been good friends forever, but suddenly Zach is professing his love and Lucy is like "Oh I love you too!" That just seemed a little too fast for me. But then as the story progressed I really loved how supportive they were to each other. You could tell that they really cared for one another. By the end of the book I loved them as a couple. They were quite sweet.

The whole weaving of fantasy and reality was very cleverly done. Especially the use of the Scarborough Fair song. That was my favorite part of the book! I love challenges and puzzles so the "impossible" tasks were really interesting to me. The whole elfin curse aspect was also quite intriguing. And I can I just say that Padraig Seeley is THE ULTIMATE CREEPER!!! Everything about him was just sooo disgusting. I knew from the moment he showed up in the story that he was evil. He just had such a bad aura!

I felt that the ending to the story was absolutely perfect. It wrapped up the novel beautifully without being cheesy or overly romantic. I thought that the whole mother/daughter theme in the story was great. In most YA novels the mothers (and fathers too) are normally extremely overbearing or negligent. It was great to see a depiction of a loving relationship between a mother and daughter. And a loving and trusting relationship between the entire family in general.

I give Impossible 4 out of 5 cupcakes!

I decided to look up the "Are You Going to Scarborough Fair" song so I could hear it. Its definitely interesting and has a kind of eerie quality to it. You can hear the Simon and Garfunkel version that Lucy refers to in the book below.



One last thing. Was anyone else a little weirded out by the fact that Lucy's foster mother's name was Soledad? I mean what kind of name is Soledad? Rather unfortunate if you ask me.

Julia :)