Book Review: Impossible

By Nancy Werlin

Lucy Scarborough is only 17, but she carries the burden of a curse that has already struck down several women in her family. Each of her afflicted ancestors failed at completing three seemingly impossible tasks, and each succumbed to madness at the birth of her first child. Facing this tragic fate, Lucy braces herself for a losing battle. Mercifully, she has allies in her struggle: intensely sympathetic foster parents and her loyal childhood friend Zach.

Why I read it: This was something I picked up randomly at the library. I guess I just liked the cover; I’m a big fan of covers with girls in pretty dresses. :)

What I liked: This book had a really original premise. It deals with the song Scarborough Fair, which I’ve always loved. Unfortunately, if I told you much about the premise it would kind of spoil the story. I read too many reviews beforehand, so I already knew a lot of what was going to happen. My advice to you is, don’t read reviews (other than this one). Just go and read the book. You’ll like it a lot better if you don’t know what’s going to happen. I’ll just say that I really enjoyed the way this book combined genres, like romance and a sort of paranormal/fairy story… it was quite clever.

What I disliked: From the premise, this could have been a four or five star book. Unfortunately, it lost major points in the writing category. For starters, it was written in third person, switching POVs between the MCs. Normally I love this, but in this book all the characters sounded the same. The teens sounded too old and the adults sounded too young.

The plot also moved really sporadically. Sometimes it was too slow, like when the MC has to accomplish three tasks, and with 50 pages left she’s finally starting on the second one. The romance moved too quickly: just 90 pages after figuring out that he likes her, the MC is already marrying a guy (I won’t tell you who, but it’s pretty obvious from the very beginning).

The characters were okay. I didn’t hate any of them, but didn’t really care that much either, probably because of the third person narrative. The villain was barely present and it was made way too obvious that he was the villain right from the beginning. I normally don’t complain about character’s names, but the foster mom’s name was Soledad. It took me forever to realize that she was a woman, and I never really got used to it.

From a Christian Perspective: The MCs in this book are both not religious, so there isn’t much religious content, just one scene where they talk about how they don’t believe anything. There is a teen who gets pregnant and chooses not to abort, but her decision is based more on some weird promotion rather than a pro-life conviction. There was a little swearing, but not very much. In terms of sexual content, it was as clean as could possibly be expected from a book dealing with teen pregnancy. Married characters have sex (it’s not described at all) and there is a rape (which is also skimmed over).

To buy or not to buy: I personally won’t buy this because romance isn’t really my thing. Romance lovers, however, may really enjoy the unique twists in Impossible.