Review: Impossible by Komal Lewis

Impossible by Komal Lewis
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Goodreads summary:


Ashton Summers is on her way to becoming the most popular girl in school and nothing—or no one—is going to stand in her way. Especially not Luca Byron, her freak neighbor, with his tattoos, loud music, and distracting green eyes.

Luca Byron has three goals in life: get through high school with a low profile, make sure his garage band becomes something more than a hobby, and try to forget about his insufferable ex-best friend, Ashton, who he can’t get out of his mind.

The last thing Ashton and Luca want to do is rekindle their friendship, but when Ashton takes a tumble down the social ladder, Luca—with his new makeover—is the only one who can help her rise up again by pretending to be her boyfriend. At first, being together is unbearable and annoying, but things start to change as Ashton and Luca discover the real reasons they drifted apart seven years ago. 

Now, keeping their hands off each other seems impossible.


My review:

I knew I was going to have a rough time with this early on. Not the best phrasing, some questionable wording choices, choppy storytelling, etc, but I pressed on nonetheless. I love the boy/girl next door thing, always have, so I kept going just for the story.

I think I was at 60% on my kindle when I actually wondered out loud if Ashton would be a bitch through the whole damned book or if she would *ever* grow the hell up.

Unfortunately, the answer is not really. She has a few moments where I thought. "Okay, this is it. She's had this beautiful, touching revelation, *now* she'll grow up."

Every one of those moments ended in her reverting to bitch-form.

I swear to God, every time Luca went all mush about her, he lost points with me. By tens and twenties.

I could almost make allowances if the story was better constructed. There were too many stops and starts. Too many "I've been horrible...hold me" moments followed almost immediately by "but it's getting me what I want so it's okay" moments. How many times can one person have a self-revelation with absolutely no positive growth?

Slight pet peeve, too. When I was writing Harry Potter fanfiction year ago, I bent over backward to make sure I used Britishisms because my story was set in England, the characters British. If I can do that for a fanfiction, I don't think it's too much to ask that other authors do that when they set their stories in America (ie - at a party, we'd have candy and chips, not sweets and crisps.) /Rant

So. It could have been an interesting love story, but when the writing isn't tight, and the main character seriously hard to like? It's more like homework than pleasure reading. Blarg.