Book Review: Impossible

Title: Impossible

Author: Nancy Werlin

Publisher: Speak (division of Penguin Group), 2009

Page total: 376

Date read: April 17th, 2010

Genre(s): Young Adult, (a little bit of) Urban Fantasy

Reviewed by Ginny

On the evening of Lucy Scarborough’s seventh birthday, after the biggest party the neighborhood had seen since, well, Lucy’s sixth birthday, Lucy got one last unexpected gift.

Lucy Scarborough is seventeen when she learns about the curse that lies in the Scarborough women. They are doomed to give birth to a baby -always a girl- at eighteen and then go mad. Lucy knows it from her mother - she, too, went crazy shortly after Lucy’s birth. Now Lucy’s living with foster parents who love her like their own daughter.

When Lucy gets pregnant, a result of being raped by seemingly shy and nice Gray Spencer, who died at the prom night he raped her, and when she discovers her birthmother’s diary, Lucy can’t help but wondering what a coincidence it must be that Lucy is pregnant at age of seventeen with no real father for the baby, just like it was for her mother when she got pregnant with seventeen.

In order to break the curse, Lucy must perform 3 seemingly impossible tasks:

1. Make a seamless shirt without needlework.

2. Find an acre of land between the salt water and the sea strand.

3. Plow that land with a goat’s horn and sow it all over with one grain of corn.

She has time until her baby is born; else she’ll get crazy just like her ancestors. But Lucy is not alone: She has her loving foster parents and childhood friend Zach - or is he just a childhood friend? Could there be more?

I have to say, I'd been a bit wary about reading this book because of the plot. I was worried it would be boring.

Then I opened this book and began to read.

And it was impossible to put down. This book deals with a problem that occurs often in the reality as well -teenage pregnancy-, and also about true love. Lucy is a strong heroine, nowhere near ready to give up and Zach is so caring and protective about her. This book held my attention until the very end, and I couldn’t hide my disappointment that showed up at my face, as I finished the book. But it has a nice ending, a mixture of happy and open end.

4.5 Kisses!

Quotes:

"When you first fall in love, it’s supposed to be awful. Awful, uncertain, scary, wonderful, confusing, all at once. That’s how you know it’s real. You have to care deeply. Passionately. That hurts."

"You’re having trouble being the one who takes, instead of the one who gives. I understand that. But, Lucy, you have to learn to accept. You’ve given plenty to me in the past. So now, you get to receive. From everybody in your life. It’s all right. It’s more than all right."

"What about Frederica?" Lucy mused. "There’d be so many nicknames to choose from. Freddy. Ricky. Reka. Don’t you think it’s pretty? Frederica! It’s so unusual." "Who says unusual is good?" Zach said. "Plus, it’s too long. How about Jenny or Annie? That way, she wouldn’t have the same trouble learning to write her name as, oh, you did. You wrote the letter ‘d’ backward through half of kindergarten. Lucinba."