Title: Impossible
Author: Nancy Werlin
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 2/5
Summary: 17-year-old Lucy Scarborough discovers that all the women in her family—including her—are cursed by an ancient evil power. Can she can complete three impossible tasks before time runs out and free herself and all future generations from the curse?

Review: This book was alright, but I expected more from an Indie Next pick.

The plot was engaging, but I had trouble connecting with the main character. The point of view would switch from one paragraph to the next with no warning, and she didn’t always sound like a 17-year-old girl. Here she is talking to a guy a couple years older than her:

“You will make that happen. Isn’t that so?”

It took him a minute. “Yes,” he said finally. “It’s so.”

When’s the last time you heard a teenager talking like that?

Some other things that stood out to me:

• A lot of the dialogue read as choppy due to too much standing or sitting or looking out the window in between each line.
• I thought it was odd that an issue with the best friend’s boyfriend is given so much attention at the beginning, but it’s resolved “off screen” later on and mentioned just as an aside.
• I didn’t feel like the main character was really taking the tasks all that seriously, and I was a little disappointed in the resolution of that storyline. I guess I expected something more clever and less literal.

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon