The Summer of Impossible Things by Rowan Coleman
If you could change the past, would you?
Thirty years ago, something terrible happened to Luna’s mother. Something she’s only prepared to reveal after her death.
Now Luna and her sister have a chance to go back to their mother’s birthplace and settle her affairs. But in Brooklyn they find more questions than answers, until something impossible – magical – happens to Luna, and she meets her mother as a young woman back in the summer of 1977.
At first Luna’s thinks she’s going crazy, but if she can truly travel back in time, she can change things. But in doing anything – everything – to save her mother’s life, will she have to sacrifice her own?
This is an outstanding read. A beautiful, beautiful book. Not, I hasten to add, strictly speaking a crime book – though it does have a crime at the heart of it. Rather it is a magical piece of prose which transports the reader from present day Brooklyn into the past and back again with a lyrical touch that is so light you feel as if you are dancing on air.
Luna and Pia are sisters. After their mother’s death, they travel to Brooklyn to dispose of a derelict property that their mother and her sister jointly owned, but which their mother would never agree to sell while she was alive.
While they are there, they learn things about their mother that they never knew, but which explain a great deal about her and the family life they led.
Then Luna begins to learn more at close hand and finds she is faced with an impossible choice. Can she do what she must to save her mother – and if she does, what will become of her?
There are some books that require you to suspend disbelief and you struggle to do so. This is not one of them. Like Tinkerbell, whom Peter Pan saved by getting the audience to believe in fairies, I wanted to believe in this so much that it came easily.
A story of love and sacrifice, of doing all you can for those you love, The Summer of Impossible Things left an indelible mark on my heart.
Buy it, read it. Weep.
The Summer of Impossible Things is published by Ebury Press on June 29th
About the author
Rowan Coleman worked in bookselling and publishing for seven years before winning Company Magazine Young Writer of the Year in 2001. Her first novel GROWING UP TWICE was published in 2002 and was a WHS Fresh Talent winner. Since then Rowan has written twelve novels, including THE ACCIDENTAL MOTHER, THE BABY GROUP, and RUNAWAY WIFE, which won The Festival of Romance Best Romantic Read 2012, The RoNA Epic Romance novel of 2013 and was shortlisted for the RNA Romantic Novel of the Year 2013 and is the book that inspired Rowan to release WOMAN WALKS INTO A BAR as an ebook (published 10th September 2013) with 100% of her royalties going to Refuge. Her Sunday Times bestselling novel THE MEMORY BOOK was a Richard and Judy Bookclub selection 2014, and Love Reading Novel of the Year, as voted for by readers. Her latest novel WE ARE ALL MADE OF STARS is out now. Rowan now lives in Hertfordshire with her husband, and large family of four children, including surprise toddler twins. Rowan is often quite tired.
