With this novel, Rachel Donohue has solidified her status in my mind as a truly exceptional writer. I just love reading her words. The Temple House Vanishing was excellent and The Beauty of Impossible Things is no different.

This story hinges on the beliefs and mysteries of the paranormal in an unnamed, small coastal town in Ireland. The atmosphere of the novel is palpable and the depiction of the narrator, Natasha's, sense of the world, her empathic and supernatural abilities, is hauntingly beautiful.

The intrigues, the obsessions and the heightened stakes of a tight knit community build to a crescendo in a perfectly paced narrative. The foreshadowing throughout the novel really builds the suspense whilst making the reader feel like they don't want to look. I believed Natasha, I didn't want to look, and yet I couldn't look away.

I also particularly enjoyed the depiction of 'academics' that have an interest in the paranormal and unexplained. You can feel how much it means to Natasha that someone validates her experiences, but as the novel progresses she is being used more and more for prestige. The narration works in such a way that you can see the affects of this period in her life have haunted her and it is both interesting and painful to watch.

It’s been a while since I’ve read a book like this. The Beauty of Impossible Things is truly the perfect title for this melancholic yet alluring book that creates a heady atmosphere from the first few pages; I found myself entranced.

Written by Irish author Rachel Donohue, it’s about all those people who have lost dreams or people they love and are just finding a way to try and get through life.

The Beauty of Impossible Things is very much about our narrator Natasha’s personal journey rather than what happens in the plot per se and it really is thoughtful and beautiful, although tinged with sadness.

Told to us in the first person by Natasha, she is recounting the summer she turned 15 to her therapist, years later. So we get to hear what happened, as well as her musings on why things went the way they did and her regrets too.

On the cusp of adulthood, Natasha is finding her own voice and trying to find her authentic self. This involves her exploring her complex relationship with her mother, in fact, The Beauty of Impossible Things really does a brilliant job of shining a light on the fragility of all kinds of relationships. Including Natasha’s changing one with her best friend, Marcus and her more maternal one with her friend Lewis.

Natasha and her mother live in a big house (inherited, they have little money now so take in lodgers to make ends meet) in a charming seaside town. Mr Bowen is their new lodger and takes a shine to Natasha’s mother.

While this is happening, mysterious blue lights appear in the sky and send the town into a spin – What are they? What do they mean? I actually found my mind pinging to random X-Files memories when reading – both in the ‘there’s something out there’ and romantic tension between lead character ways.

The other element of the story is that Natasha has foresight on what will happen in her life and to those around her through premonitions in her dreams. This is is actually the second book I’ve read recently by an Irish author that looks at the idea of predicting the future in dreams (the other was Snowflake).

The Beauty of Impossible Things taps into the need for acceptance and inability to communicate that a lot of people can probably relate to and really struck a chord with me. Stunningly written, I devoured it on a sunny afternoon in the garden, which wonderfully evoked the novel’s sunshine beach setting and definitely helped me dive further into the world of the narrative.

I was really captivated by this evocative read. Suspend your disbelief a little and go with it.

"It was a strange summer, even before it became tragic."

I really wanted to love this book, because the premise is exactly the sort of thing I enjoy. In the end I did like it, the second half more so. I enjoyed the mystery of the lights, and the missing person. The language in the book was beautiful, ethereal even at times, but it also lacked umph.

I wasn't invested in the people. If I had put it down and never picked it back up again, my questions would have been about how it ended. Not because I cared about the people, but because I was curious to know how the author wrapped it up. Really, I just wanted to know what the blue lights were and what happened to the missing person.

I enjoyed the mystery element, but sometimes it was trying too hard to be mysterious. This meant, to me, that characters were always held at arms length. I wanted to care about Natasha or her Mother, but there was nothing that gave me a reason to. I will say that I liked Lewis though, he was my favourite character!

It wasn't what I was expecting, based on the summary I read. This just wasn't for me, but if you enjoy a bit of an ethereal feeling mystery and don't have to like your main character (which isn't a bad thing, I know a lot of people enjoy characters like this!) then this might be for you.

The Beauty of Impossible Things is not easy to classify. It relates events from a single scorching summer thirty years ago, when Natasha was fifteen and living with her beautiful, bohemian and unworldly mother in a ramshackle old house above an Irish seaside town. In this regard it might be called a coming-of-age story but it covers a range of themes beyond that. The mother-daughter relationship is the pivot around which Rachel Donohue explores the angst which accompanies the transition from child to young adult. The notion of identity is considered and how we deal with our sense of ourselves alongside the pain of otherness and how far we will go in our desire to belong. This is a gentle, slow-moving, character-driven book; haunting and melancholic, elegiac. At times the book takes on a summer gothic quality. The sense of place is strong and emotions are finely drawn.

The structure of the book is refreshingly simple. It is not all introspection. There is a story involving a mystery, a disappearance and jealousy. Natasha recalls the summer as a middle-aged woman, bringing back the memories at the suggestion of her therapist. This provides an additional layer as older Natasha observes and remarks on those long-ago events and reflects on her own behaviour as an unusual child at a difficult moment in her life. This is a book of longing and regret.

Understated and beautifully written, this is a quiet novel. It still lingers with me and will do so for a while. I would happily read more from Rachel Donohue and will seek out her earlier book. My thanks to Net Galley and Atlantic Books for the ARC of this book in exchange for an independent and unbiased review.

A dark and fascinating tale! I found it gripping, atmospheric and enthralling.
The author is a talented storyteller and the plot and character development are excellent.
It's one of those stories that you cannot stop reading and it's highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine