Nancy Werlin

Impossible — (2008) Young adult. Publisher: Lucy has nine months to break an ancient curse in order to save both herself and her unborn daughter. Inspired by the ballad 'Scarborough Fair,' this riveting novel combines suspense, fantasy, and romance for an intensely page-turning and masterfully original tale. Lucy is seventeen when she discovers that the women of her family have been cursed through the generations, forced to attempt three seemingly impossible tasks or to fall into madness upon their child's birth. But Lucy is the first girl who won't be alone as she tackles the list. She has her fiercely protective foster parents and her childhood friend Zach beside her. Do they have love and strength enough to overcome an age-old evil?

Impossible

This is a difficult review for me to write. Nancy Werlin makes several plotting decisions that don’t quite work for me, even though I can see the ways these decisions serve the narrative.

Impossible is a book I should have loved. I adore plots that hinge on the exact wording of curses and prophecies: “none of woman born,” “when two Mondays come together,” that sort of thing. Here is a whole novel based on that concept. Our heroine, Lucy Scarborough, must complete three seemingly impossible tasks in order to save herself and her unborn daughter.

The trouble begins on prom night, when Lucy is raped by a classmate. That’s bad enough by itself, but Lucy suspects that the boy wasn’t really “himself” when he attacked her, and that something even more frightening is afoot. Lucy becomes pregnant, and learns that she comes from a long line of cursed women. If she can’t complete the impossible tasks, she will belong forever to a sinister Elfin Knight, and her daughter will repeat the pattern in eighteen years.

I enjoyed following Lucy on her quest to unravel the riddles, and the Elfin Knight is a really well-crafted villain. His inhuman smoothness is so creepy it’ll send shivers down your spine. That, and it’s refreshing that the controlling supernatural lover is the bad guy, given some of the disturbing trends that have swept YA fantasy in recent years.

To me, the idea of the Elfin Knight possessing random human boys to perpetrate his crimes is a little convoluted. Yet I can see why Werlin did it this way. Making a minor character the biological father avoids an incestuous situation that might just be too icky for YA.

The larger problem is Lucy’s amazing support system. Lucy’s foster parents and her childhood friend Zach never waver in their support for her, and all of them come to believe in the magic far too quickly. The three of them give Lucy lots of help in completing the tasks. I think Werlin is trying to say something about the power of true love. Instead, it makes me wonder what happens to girls whose parents disown them when they get pregnant, girls who don’t have noble young men suddenly deciding to marry them, girls who don’t have the money for big, spontaneous road trips. Would Lucy have a chance at defeating the Elfin Knight without the help of her family and friends? The answer is in the fates of her foremothers. No matter how clever or strong Lucy might be, she’d be doomed if she had to solve her problems on her own.

Impossible contains a good message for the parents of teenage girls: support your daughters, and they can survive the curves life throws them. But to the daughters themselves, it seems to say, “you’re screwed if they don’t.” —Kelly Lasiter

Extraordinary — (2010) Young adult. Publisher: Phoebe finds herself drawn to Mallory, the strange and secretive new kid in school, and the two girls become as close as sisters... until Mallory's magnetic older brother, Ryland, shows up during their junior year. Ryland has an immediate, exciting hold on Phoebe but a dangerous hold, for she begins to question her feelings about her best friend and, worse, about herself. Soon she'll discover the shocking truth about Ryland and Mallory: that these two are visitors from the faerie realm who have come to collect on an age-old debt. Generations ago, the faerie queen promised Pheobe's ancestor five extraordinary sons in exchange for the sacrifice of one ordinary female heir. But in hundreds of years there hasn't been a single ordinary girl in the family, and now the faeries are dying. Could Phoebe be the first ordinary one? Could she save the faeries, or is she special enough to save herself?