Impossible: 10/21/11

Impossible by Nancy Werlin was on my wishlist because I love the song "Scarborough Affair." I was curious to see how it could be expanded into a YA novel.

For the most part I loved the book but it takes a couple chapters to find its voice. The book starts out like a typical YA novel with a pair of girls in high school chitchatting about boys and other mundane stuff. Unfortunately this part is weakly written, including a laughable scene involving too many people stuffed into a Mini. Had the book continued on these lines, I would have tossed it aside. You can easily skip all these wasted pages and go to the prom scene.

The rest of the book unfolds from Lucy coming to terms with what happened at the prom and trying to break the curse she is now under. While the curse is a very real threat to Lucy and has been a curse passed down through the generations, it's also a dark, metaphorical look at teenage pregnancy.

Like Bumped, Impossible would do well in a high school English course. The way the folk song is interpreted can be one approach to analyzing the book. Date rape, teenage pregnancy and single parenting can also be discussed. As with Bumped I suggest putting it alongside The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawtorne.

Four stars.

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