Fans of the Impossible Life

by Kate Scelsa

[Angie]

If you were drawn in by the "...and the boy in love with both of them" part of the book description, know now that Fans of the Impossible Life is not that. At all. No one is in love with anybody. At least not in a romantic sense. This is a dark story about three teens dealing with heavy issues and finding comfort with each other. There is a bit of romance, but it's very minor. The focus really is on how Mira, Jeremy, and Sebby are dealing (or not) with their individual problems while also trying to be there for each other.

I have to start with the one thing that kept me from getting fully immersed in the story. Fans of the Impossible Life alternates between all three characters POVs, but it also switches between first, second, and third person perspective. I hate switching back and forth from first to third, and while I love second on its own, it just made the switches even more difficult to settle into. Transitioning from one chapter to the next was rough. It does make it easy to keep track of whose head we're in, but it made it harder to stay in the story. The frequent time jumps also didn't help much.

What I super duper loved about Fans of the Impossible Life was that it's chock full of diversity! And it all feels natural! Mira is biracial (half-black and half-white, and her story about going to dinner totally resonated with me! people are so stupid!), overweight, and struggling with depression. Sebby is gay, a foster kid, and struggling with self-harm. Jeremy is also gay (but maybe bisexual, or neither) and has two gay dads, one of which is a recovering alcoholic. Then there's Rose who is friends with Mira, who is a lesbian, and her ex-girlfriend is Korean. Beautiful.

I did enjoy Fans of the Impossible Life overall. It's an "issue book" but no one is healed by the power of love, or even at all. I felt like this was especially clear when Mira's parents are talking to her about catching up on classes she missed so that she can graduate on time and go to college now that she's "better." Obviously, we're in Mira's head for part of the book and we can see that she may be better in the sense that she's not trying to kill herself, but she's certainly not ready for that kind of added pressure. She's just trying to get through the days one at a time. I think her parents are an accurate portrayal of the general population's view on depression, which sucks.

In the end, Fans of the Impossible Life was not at all what I was expecting thanks to that lie of a blurb. It was still good though. I just wish that I had gone into it without that expectation of things maybe getting awkward because Jeremy is in love with both Mira and Sebby. I kept waiting for that moment, which never came, and suddenly the book was over.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.