Monday, September 12, 2011

Impossible

Werlin, N. (2008). Impossible. NY: Dial.
LS5385: YA Lit/Fantasy



The copy I read of this book had the second cover on it, and I like it better.  For one, I think it fits better with the story, but also, I think if I would have had a choice, I would have been more drawn to the second cover than the first.  Something a little more mysterious and magical to it and seems to fit the genre better.

Anyhow, this was a very quick read and an interesting premise with a curse on the main character and all females before her, going back to ancestors long ago, and the curse is found in the lyrics of a different version of Simon & Garfunkel's Scarborough Fair. What makes the premise interesting is that the setting is modern day, and the main character and supporting characters actually discuss the curse straight out, realize it seems crazy, but decide to accept it as fact and do what they can to break it. 

**spoiler alert** 

A teenaged girl reading this book would probably love it, as the main character, at age 17, finds her true love who marries her and goes through childbirth with her having the child of another teenager, and a child who was conceived through rape.  They live happily ever after.

As a grown-up girl, I had little patience for this section of the book where they all of a sudden are twenty-year-old man and seventeen-year-old wife (despite his being a virgin and she having had sex once and it was rape, and their having kissed maybe twice) and they set-up house and head to the bedroom. Mercifully we are spared details of that, but their cutesie addresses to each other ("oh husband??) when there's a curse that's about to literally make her go insane, and her baby be enslaved to an evil fairy was a bit of a stretch.

ASIDE from that, I did actually enjoy the book.  It was fun, it was escapist, and you really just weren't sure our very pregnant protagonist was going to pull-off beating the evil Elfin Knight and his age-old curse.  The author even threw a little twist in towards the end, just when you thought everything was okie dokie.


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