While its never quite sure what it wants to be, Julie Mayhew’s Impossible Causes is still a creative story that follows an original path. At times, there is a strong historical fiction feel, and at other times, the isolated setting gives an almost post-apocalyptic vibe. Neither of these is actually the case and it occasionally grew frustrating as it made the novel difficult for me to ever settle in to.
Mayhew does an excellent job of describing the setting and giving the feel for this remote island, but that unfortunately comes at the expense of the thriller or mystery elements. Additionally, the large cast of characters keeps the reader from feeling connected to anyone in the story and with very few exceptions, the reader gets to know only a minimal amount about most characters – enough to tell them apart, but not really enough to care about them.
Leah, the character we focus on the most, is fully fleshed-out and very interesting, but it is as if she is in a town with a bunch of cardboard cut-outs. Other characters don’t get the attention that Leah gets so we end up with only surface details. They don’t feel like real people the way Leah does.
I did, however, enjoy some of the story-telling elements Mayhew employed. Similar to the first season of the Netflix series Bloodline, the book opens toward the end of the story, so we know what is going to happen (at least partly) but we don’t know how we are going to get there, or how things will ultimately be resolved. That non-linear type of storytelling isn’t for everyone, but I love it!
Unfortunately, the downside of telling the story that way is that the time jumps can be confusing, and they definitely were in this case. It became difficult to keep dates straight and might have been easier if passages had been labelled “the previous fall” or “the next spring” rather than with specific dates.
While every aspect of reading and reviewing a book is ultimately up to the individual preferences and expectations of the reader, I found myself wondering if the extensive uses of Biblical references and/or pagan concepts might have a significant impact on how a reader feels about this particular story. Feelings about the Bible, Christianity, and religion in general vary greatly from family to family, state to state, and country to country, and the individual feelings about these concepts would greatly change the readers perception of the world where this story takes place. Two people with contrasting views of the Bible and Biblical beliefs will have sharply differing opinions about the story they just read.
Possibly my favourite things about Impossible Causes is how the author did not end the book with some of the clichés and tropes that you think are coming, and that some authors might have mistakenly chosen. Mayhew shifts things just enough to provide a satisfying and thought-provoking conclusion.
Impossible Causes is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
For readers of All The Missing Girls and You Will Know Me, Impossible Causes is a gripping thriller about isolation, power, and the lies that fester when witnesses stay silent.
For six months out of the year, Lark Island is fogged in, its occupants cut off completely from the mainland. The community is small, tight-knit, and deeply religious. Lark seems like a good place for 16-year-old Viola Kendrick and her mother to be alone as they mourn Viola’s father and brother, both killed in a tragic accident.
But the islanders are hiding dark secrets. As the winter fog sets in, Viola gets to know the Eldest Girls – the only three teenagers on Lark – and begins to learn about the island’s twisted history, including an old story of a young girl, whose death the islanders insist was accidental. When a man’s body is found at the end of Viola’s first winter on Lark, Viola finds herself at the center of a murder mystery: one that asks whether the man’s death was a righteous act of revenge, or a cold-blooded killing.
Eerie and menacing, timely and moving, Impossible Causes is an unputdownable thriller that examines the consequences of secrets kept at young women’s expense.
