Impossible

Hey folks, brace yourselves for something different! This isn't your usual Omegaverse story with a timid girl and many tough guys. Instead, we're diving deep into the lives of characters dealing with real-life trauma, all while trying to find their way in a world that seems to have it in for them. It's beautifully penned and sure to tug at your heartstrings. So, get ready for one heck of an emotional roller coaster with this impressive debut novel in the genre!

Thank you to the author for an ARC copy; this is my honest review.

I'm still trying to get my thoughts together, so this review is a work in progress. This book had such a strong impact on me, that I want to be sure that I give a review that does it justice. For now I just want to highlight some of my favorite things about this book, and hopefully I can turn this into something more well formed later on:

Things this book did masterfully:

-Depicting an intimate relationship with a person in an ED:
The nuance around love and romanticism and eroticism was so so well done here. Lyra couldn't rely on easy characterizations of love evidenced by internal monologues like “she was so hot, beautiful, sexy, perfect, etc.” Because ED are ugly things and can turn people into selfish, prideful, ugly people. This strengthened the feeling of love between the main characters, beyond what I would think was possible to communicate in a book of this genre. The love came from the characters seeing beyond all of the ugly, and difficult parts of each other to appreciate the purest, best parts. The love was a healing love that made all of the characters want to be better for themselves and each other.

-Depicting a relationship that isn't just adding more people into a more classically heteronormative relationship structure.
The relationship Midas pack had didn't just feel like a bunch of straight guys in a relationship with a girl. (If that's your preferred take on the Omegaverse, no judgement, but you probably wont like this)
This book explored and deepened the relationships between all of the pack members, while still managing to keep Indie securely in focus as the main character.

In the afterword of the book the author said she was trying to explore how the omegaverse would necessarily have different notions of what affection is socially appropriate between males, and I thought this exploration was incredibly successful. There was an integrated sort of love between all of the characters, and even ones who would be considered to be filling a more classically male gender role were able to (after time) openly and casually bestow physical affection on their male pack mates. It was so beautiful. It made me deeply sad that I live in a world where this isn't the norm.

-Depiction of an ED:
Indie's ED was handled masterfully. Either Lyra Cole has really done her research, or she's lived this life, because there's a sensitive attention to detail that doesn't feel gratuitous, or like reading torture porn. Nothing was done for shock value, it just felt very very real.

Without going into too much detail I will just say that I have a past very similar to Indie's. I'm very lucky that I made it, and there are several moments I can recall that tell me I probably shouldn't have. I, like indie, had parents that didn't care to stop me from starving myself to death. I wasn't doing what I was doing as a cry for help, but a struggle for control. I wanted to be perfect so I could be appreciated, but I also wanted to be invisible so I wasn't a burden, I wanted to be worthy of a soft sort of love and caring I had never experienced, I wanted to die young, or freeze time and stay young forever.

It was honestly quite haunting to see my own thoughts reflected back at me, almost verbatim, so many times through Indie. But it was also so, so lovely and healing to read such a beautiful, tender story about a young woman who finds a family to care about her enough to make her want to change. I didn't have that, and reading about it feels like reading a fairy tale ending to a life I lived once too.

! WARNING !:
For those wanting to read this with a similar story to mine, take the triggers of this book very seriously . If you aren't in a place to read about numbers, and if you aren't ready to live in an ED brain again, even if it's someone else's, don't read this book . Even if you would consider yourself recovered, take a pause and check in with yourself. The writing here is very well done. I was quite literally thrown back in time, with vivid memories about what it felt like to be actively dying. I am in a place now where this only motivates me to continue to make choices that keep me healthy and happy. I don't know if I could say the same even 1 to 2 years ago, so take this shit seriously and love yourself enough to not read this if that is what's best for you.