Book Log: Impossible

Impossible by Nancy Werlin

Lucy Scarborough doesn’t really believe in true love. She believes in being practical, in being content in her life with her beloved foster parents, Soledad and Leo Markowitz, and the friendship of guy-next-door Zach. And most of the time, she can keep her birth mother Miranda, who is insane, lives on the streets, and sometimes shows up to harass her, out of sight and out of mind. But that’s before the nightmare begins—the rape, her pregnancy—and the discovery of an ages-old curse.

Lucy is one in a long line of Scarborough women—women who get pregnant when they are seventeen, and are doomed to madness from the moment their daughter is born—unless they can complete three impossible tasks. Lucy is afraid—but she is determined to try to succeed, even though generations of Scarborough women before her have always failed. But she has something they don’t—the love of her foster parents, and the strength and courage of Zach—who is becoming more than a friend with every passing day.

This is the kind of book that I love most: a retold fairy tale that fits, doesn’t feel forced, and allows for modern influences. It reminds me of Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin—with both the implied positives and negatives of that title. I felt a little bit like the first half of the book—up until Lucy really discovers and believes in the curse—dragged. It’s unavoidable, I guess, but as the reader, I knew that the curse was true, and I was just waiting for Lucy to discover it and believe it herself. It made me impatient for the book to get moving.

But once it picked up, it certainly did get moving. Once Lucy and her family accept the reality of this crazy curse, the modern approach to solving an ancient puzzle is fascinating and compelling. There are certain moments in the book that feel a little silly—but they are mitigated because Werlin has the characters recognize that they’re silly, or that certain reactions or decisions don’t make any sense at all, but they’re making them anyway.

I also found the omnipresent feeling of dread in the book abolutely fascinating. The introduction of Padraig Seeley is chilling--even as Lucy and her supporters don't recognize the gravity of the threat, the reader does, which adds an element of urgency that, for much of the book, made me want to yell at Lucy to get moving. And once Lucy does realize just how awful things could be--the possibility of failure is absolutely chilling. Kudos to Werlin for making me utterly afraid for Lucy as the book neared it's close--and also for not ignoring the fact that even though a happily-ever-after may solve the immediate supernatural problems, there are still as many real life (though not as life-threatening) problems caused by the solution and the aftermath.

Overall, it’s a good solid read and a great contribution to the growing canon of retold modern fairy tales. As an aside, I do think it’s fascinating how retold ballads always seem to contain a pregnancy—like in Tam Lin.