Impossible (Impossible, #1)

by Nancy Werlin

When seventeen-year-old Lucy discovers her family is under an ancient curse by an evil Elfin Knight, she realizes to break the curse she must perform three impossible tasks before her daughter is born in order to save them both.

• ISBN10: 0142414913
• ISBN13: 9780142414910
• Publish Date: 11 August 2009 (first published 18 September 2008)
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc
• Imprint: Penguin USA
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 376
• Language: English

Reviews

[Stephanie]

I've had this book sitting on my bookshelf since late 2009. I finally got myself to read it, but now I know why I've been avoiding it for so long. I was really intrigued by this story because it's based off of a song, "Scarborough Fair", which I have never heard of until I started reading and decided to look it up.

So basically, the story is about Lucy Scarborough who is cursed to become pregnant at 17, just like her ancestors before her. If she doesn't complete three tasks that are mentioned in the song "Scarborough Fair" then she will go insane and pass the curse onto her daughter.

I found myself very impatient while I read. We don't even get to the impossible tasks until about 200 pages in. I felt like there were a lot of scenes that could have been left out and the story wouldn't have been affected at all. Which, I started skimming over a lot of pages, just to get to the part that I was interested in. The only reason I finished the book was because I was interested in how Lucy would finished the tasks.

The relationship between Lucy and Zach didn't seem genuine to me. It seemed like they were only getting together because it was convenient. There wasn't much leading up to Lucy and Zach's relationship. Zach goes from thinking of Lucy as a sister, to purposing his love to her. They never talk about liking each other or dating or anything to show that they both have feelings for each other. They go from friends to engaged. The relationship kind of rubbed me the wrong way, because Lucy is questioning her feelings for Zach throughout the whole story, but yet she still marries him for the sake of her baby. The whole relationship was just strange and didn't sit well with me.

Lucy getting raped and then easily moving on with her life also bugged me. Everyone, including Lucy's foster parents and Zach act like it wasn't a big deal. No one got angry or sad, they were all calm and accepting of it.

I felt like a lot of things got swept under the rug, for the sake of the story.

But, to put some positive into this review, I did enjoy reading about Lucy trying to break the curse and her family history. This is what kept me reading to the end.

[ladygrey]

I was surprised at how much I liked Impossible. It's a little bit of a fantasy very much grounded in reality, a book that deals with the practicalities of certain things with dignity and honesty without shying away from the difficulty of reality.

It's also delightfully romantic. The characters are all both wonderful and flawed which makes them real, even the secondary characters. The bad guy is awful and worth despising. The story proceeds along at a good pace which kept me engaged the whole way through. There were things that were obvious throughout which made me a little frustrated that I could see what was going on when the characters couldn't. But none of them were stupid about it, it's just hard sometimes to have an omniscient narrator create such a clear picture the characters can't see.

[a:Nancy Werlin|63983|Nancy Werlin|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1213649469p2/63983.jpg]'s prose isn't as complicated or fanciful as I normally am drawn to. But sometimes it's nice to read something that's clear and straightforward that still creates good characters in an incredible adventure.