Review: Impossible by Nancy Werlin

Impossible by Nancy Werlin

My rating: 3 of 5 teacups


I know three stars isn't the most helpful rating in the world, but I just feel like parts of this book were worth at least four and other parts made me want to abandon it completely. It will suit a few people's tastes perfectly, I'm sure, but I wouldn't rush out to recommend it to the masses.

The story is based upon the old folk song "Scarborough Fair", a song I am very familiar with because my nanna used to sing it to me all the time. In it a series of impossible tasks are proposed by the listener's former lover, if the tasks are completed he will take her back. Impossible uses this idea in a modern setting, with the protagonist - Lucy - trying to break the curse that has plagued the women of her family for as long as anyone can remember. They are each destined to become pregnant at eighteen and, upon birth of the child who is always female, they succumb to madness. The only way this can be avoided is to perform the impossible tasks.

I thought the paranormal aspect of the novel was the weakest and I didn't care for it. You see all that I wrote about the story in the last paragraph? You can also read this in the goodreads description, on Amazon, on the back of the book... so why does the first hundred (and more) pages treat it like it's a mystery? I know there's got to be some time for the protagonist to discover what is going on but, because the reader already knows where the story is going, I could predict each chapter before it arrived and I was thinking of giving up early on.

For me, the curse should not be explained in the description, it sucks the enjoyment out of most of the first half (well, nearly) of the book. The novel's strength comes from the development of character relationships and how the people stand together to overcome this hardship. It makes me tempted to try out some of the author's realistic fiction - like The Rules of Survival - and just forget about her paranormal stuff.