Impossible by Nancy Werlin held promise. The plot is an original one, surprising in this day and age, where most stories are copies of classics or of not-so classics. The story involves the Simon and Garfunkle song "Scarborough Fair" under the name "The Elvin Knight." It opens up with young, seven-year-old Lucy finding some mysterious papers that seem to be magical. She hides them away, promising herself to come back later, but the memory is lost to her for over ten years. When she is eighteen she learns of an age old curse on her family through some tragic circumstances. The curse can be broken if she follows the instructions in the song. The last four stanzas explain it:
From the sting of my curse she can never be free
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Unless she unravels my riddlings three
She will be a true love of mine
Tell her to make me a magical shirt
...
Without any seam or needlework
...
Tell her to find me an acre of land
...
Between the salt water and the sea strand
...
Tell her to plow it with just a goat's horn
...
And sow it all over with one grain of corn
Else she'll be a true love of mine
And all her daughters forever possessions of mine
She had to make a shirt with no seams or needles, find an acre of land in a seemingly impossible section, plow it with a goats horn (not to be confused with a shofar, a ram's horn) and then sow it with one, single grain of corn. It all sounded so promising. And then I hit the middle. Throughout the beginning her best friend Zach has been by her side, and he is the obvious love interest. I knew he would be. I felt that the love interest would be a good undercurrent in the book. Something subtle. It seemed that it would be that way. Werlin is deceptive. However, once I hit the exact middle of the book I saw her intentions. And the corniness of it all was horrific to me. He declares love for her, before he even realizes that he's in love with her. After his declaration, of course, he feels peace and recognizes the truth of the statement (really? come on). Then, a week later, he proposes. It's truly ridiculous. She doesn't know how she feels about him, but recognizes her love for him once he proposes. Not when he said he loved her, but after the marriage proposal. Which will help her.
Over all the last part of the book, for the most part, made me want to vomit. At certain mushy, lovey-dovey parts, I nearly did. The ending and the involvement of Zach as the "I'll love you till I die, even though we're eighteen and you've got some serious issues and this weird magical curse that I kind of don't believe in hanging over you. But no worries we'll make it. And look I bought a beautiful big house for us to live in." Totally unrealistic and, again, ridiculous. If you read the beginning, and the parts about the curse it's good. If you add the other crap it's not. I leave up to you dear reader, to decide if you will waste precious moments of your life reading this. However, you could die tomorrow and would you really want the last thing you read to be a crappy love novel, no matter how cleverly it was concealed?
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