Fans of the Impossible Life by Kate Scelsa

Fans of the Impossible Life
Kate Scelsa
Genre(s): Contemporary, LGBT, Young Adult
Published: September 10th 2015
Pages: 336
Rating: 1 star

“Mira is starting over at Saint Francis Prep. She promised her parents she would at least try to pretend that she could act like a functioning human this time, not a girl who can’t get out of bed for days on end, who only feels awake when she’s with Sebby.

Jeremy is the painfully shy art nerd at Saint Francis who’s been in self-imposed isolation after an incident that ruined his last year of school. When he sees Sebby for the first time across the school lawn, it’s as if he’s been expecting this blond, lanky boy with mischief glinting in his eye.

Sebby, Mira’s gay best friend, is a boy who seems to carry sunlight around with him. Even as life in his foster home starts to take its toll, Sebby and Mira together craft a world of magic rituals and impromptu road trips, designed to fix the broken parts of their lives.

As Jeremy finds himself drawn into Sebby and Mira’s world, he begins to understand the secrets that they hide in order to protect themselves, to keep each other safe from those who don’t understand their quest to live for the impossible.”

This book may be called Fans of the Impossible Life, but I wasn't a fan of it at all. I was hoping it would be good, seeing as it has quite a diverse cast of characters and tackles mental health, but it wasn't to my taste at all.

My biggest problem with it was the fact that I couldn't stand the writing style or the main characters. The story is told through multiple perspectives - not an issue, when done well, but this was just plain weird. Jeremy's chapters were in first person, Mira's in third, and Sebby's in second. While certainly unique, it didn't work, and I did not appreciate being turned into my least favourite character from the story. 'You did this, you thought this' no, I didn't, because I couldn't stand Sebby and didn't relate to him.

While the writing was unique, I felt that the rest of the book wasn't. It felt like every other young adult novel that tries to tackle mental health and more serious topics. The humour was very John Green and All the Bright Places-esque and I couldn't stand the pretension and try-hard behaviour of the characters. Sebby in particular felt very like a Manic Pixie Dream Girl - holier than thou, better than everyone else, selfish, full of himself, and above everything in life. The adults in the story felt very absent, too, and very dumb when they were included. It was as if the teens knew best and didn't have much respect for anyone other than themselves, especially not their bumbling parents.

Overall, things just felt very cliche and trope-y. Call me cynical, but I couldn't shake the feeling that this was written just for the sake of shoving as much typical young adult stuff as possible into one book. Kind of like The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Nothing felt real or genuine, and I couldn't even get excited about or appreciate the diversity because it all felt so fake and 'look at how inclusive I am!' Don't waste your time on it.