This was a beautifully written and described book but unfortunately it just didn’t work for me. I really loved the nostalgia but I just didn’t feel connected enough to the story or the humour enough to recommend or review it on my platforms.

An incredibly entertaining slice of retro fun, this novel is essentially a coming of age story that blends many pop-culture references from my childhood.
It's a strange book - in that it's difficult to predict what will happen - but it befits the story and adds an exciting overview to events.
It's quite a fast-paced book and one I'd recommend, especially to readers who remember what life was like in 1987 (moreso if one was a teenager then).

An enjoyable read. Rekulak knows how to write a story!

An enjoyable read; a great portrait of the era with some unexpected twists.

The 1980s are back!
It’s a very popular decade at the moment, on tv and in print, in order to capitalize on the nostalgia of people who were teenagers at the time – myself included. I loved Stranger Things and the San Junipero episode of Black Mirror, which, despite the not-so-happy themes, still managed to be fun, entertaining, and authentic. I didn’t enjoy Ready Player One; I couldn’t relate to the coding and gaming, and the 1980s references seemed randomly chucked in to try to make the story appeal to 1980s teens.

Thankfully The Impossible Fortress is more of the former than the latter, despite the fact that the story centers on Will, the main character, coding a video game. It was funny and relatively fast-paced, which I like. There could have been a few less details in the Main Event, but that’s just my opinion.

I particularly enjoyed the characters of Will and Mary and was impressed at how their relationship evolved without being too clichéd. It’s so refreshing to read about teenagers liking each other because of common interests, not their looks. And they weren’t so geeky that this book would only appeal to people with similar interests. Hey, I work in IT, but I don’t want to read about that stuff in my free time, although I’m sure some people do. Wider appeal is a good thing.

Finally, a huge thumbs up to the fact that they went to see Some Kind of Wonderful. It was one of my favourite movies as a teenager.

Retrospective nostalgia with a light and comical touch. A pleasure to read.

I've had a few days to think about this book and the more I do the more I love it. It's a gorgeous piece of YA with an interesting male protagonist (it's been a while since I've read a male led YA that's not Perks of Being a Wallflower or written by John Green). It made me think of Rainbow Rowell, particularly Eleanor & Park with its 80s setting. I like that it wasnt completely driven by romance with characters having their own ambitions. The Vanna White stuff was hilarious but the computer programming element was even better! It was great seeing a female character like Mary who has an interest in STEM. She was also incredibly intelligent, kind and complex, and I loved seeing how her relationship with Will grew and changed. The Impossible Fortress has a great plot too with some twists and turns. I loved it

I am an 80's obsessive so absolutely had to read this when I read the synopsis.

The premise is absolutely crazy - not ever having been a teenage boy, do they really feel so desperate to get a copy of Playboy to go to such lengths? Really? It was really good fun though. And the starting point for the ACTUAL heart & soul of the story of Billy & Mary and the Impossible Fortress...

Billy, Clark and Alf are 14 year-old boys who hatch a plan to steal a copy of Playboy as part of a money making scheme. Billy however becomes way more interested in entering a computer coding competition and needs the daughter of the store that sells the Playboy magazine's help to get his game to work properly. Getting close to Mary means he can fix his game (the competition prize being a state of the art computer) as well as getting the alarm code for the shop to give to his friends...

As you have probably guessed things don't quite go to plan... Mayhem ensues on the heist, people are double crossed, hearts are broken, trust is lost, friends fall out, teenage angst a plenty as well as multiple versions of the same story.

I really enjoyed this, however I found the representation of Clark's "Claw" a bit harsh, as well as the obsession over Playboy mildly excessive. It was a really easy fun read, with a lot of heart, and definitely had me filled with 80s nostalgia, it is just that parts of it fell a little flat, and I wanted a more satisfying ending.

Billy is a fourteen year old boy growing up in New Jersey in the late 1980s. His obsession is computing and he is working on a game on his Commodore 64. his other obsession is Vanna White, a gameshow hostess who has recently done a shoot for Playboy. However in the 1980s soft-core porn was not easy to get hold of for an underage boy and so Billy and his friends plot how they can hold of an illicit copy of the magazine.

This is a sweet and funny look back at a time before the world wide web and how the problems of adolescence have not really changed.

1980s nostalgia reigns in this charming coming-of-age novel.

Billy and his two friends, Alf and Clark, are the classic stereotypical hapless teens trying to negotiate high school. This objective, they think, will be easier if only they could get a copy of the latest Playboy magazine which features the object of their fantasies, Wheel of Fortune hostess, Vanna White. The novel follows their attempts to get a copy of the magazine from the only outlet in their town stocking it: Zelinsky's. Obviously this is much more difficult than they first anticipate, necessitating more and more elaborate plans that form the main narrative in this engaging and humorous novel.

There's much to enjoy here for those who remember the 1980s - especially the technology, as Billy is a keen programmer. There's also much to enjoy, I suspect, if you don't remember the 1980s, but remember the feeling of being a teenager and excluded from an adult world that seemed so attractive yet out of reach. Read it and remember (and laugh!)

Five thoughts about The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak –

01. It’s full of glorious eighties details (so beautifully accurate that I’m wondering if it’s a tiny bit autobiographical…?).

We played marathon games of Risk and Monopoly that dragged on for days and always ended with one angry loser flipping the board off the table. We argued about music and movies; we had passionate debates over who would win in a brawl: Rocky Balboa or Freddy Krueger? Bruce Springsteen or Billy Joel? Magnum P.I. or T. J. Hooker or MacGyver?*

02. There’s an innocence to this story which is kinda sweet and funny… Which is odd given that it’s the story of a group of boys trying to get their hands on a copy of Playboy.

“She’s sitting on a windowsill, like this? And she’s leaning outside. Like she’s checking the weather? Only she’s not wearing pants!”
“That’s impossible,” Clark said. The three of us all lived on the same block, and over the years we’d learned that Alf was prone to exaggeration.

03. Because it’s a YA novel set in the eighties, I’m concerned that it won’t reach an appreciative audience (because YA) and it won’t be appreciated by its intended audience (where do Millennials stand on the eighties – daggy? Retro? What’s the eighties?).

04. The dialogue between the boys is well done. Nice to see a YA book about ‘relationships’ (with a male focus), fills a niche.

“How about U2?” Clark suggested. Alf shook his head. “One-hit wonder,” he said dismissively. “I’m thinking Cutting Crew.”

05. There’s a whole bunch of stuff about computer coding in this story (it’s actually a critical part of the plot). Anyhoo, I know nothing about coding but I love the fact that the fictional game the characters talk about, was actually made. Cool beans.

3.5/5 Will be sending this book by the way of my 15-year-old son. Yes, even though it’s about Playboy.

I received my copy of The Impossible Fortress from the publisher, Faber & Faber, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

*Balboa, Springsteen, Magnum

With the kind of quest that gladdens the heart of film-makers like Spielberg, Jason Rekulak's The Impossible Fortress places the experiences of young adolescents at its heart and is all the better for it.

The eighties, All-American small -town setting only adds to the charm of both characters and narrative as a group of teenage boys, caught between the competing tensions of childhood and adolescence, set out to acquire a copy of Playboy with Vanna White as its centrefold. Further tension is generated via our readerly response, especially if you are a parent, which veers from exasperation to sympathy to exasperation again as the boys quest becomes ever more grandiose and risky in its planning and eventual execution.


The boys cluelessness, poor insight and lack of ability to play the consequences game is poignantly set against the story of Mary whose impressive computer skills and lack of social success could leave her one-dimensional in the hands of a less competent writer. However there's far more to Mary and our own discovery of this goes hand in hand with the protagonist, Billy. In fact, I was more moved than I thought I'd be by Mary's story and the reasons behind it which show that underneath the seemingly one-dimensional depiction of her as computer geek -and a girl who steps outside of the expected feminine gender narrative- there lies a wellspring of need and longing which cannot be met by Billy or her father.


This book could also be classified as YA (which I usually avoid) so I am glad it wasn't. I would have missed out on an entertaining and moving few hours of reading.

I read and reviewed this book as an adult fiction, as it was sold into me by my supplier. On that level, it didn't really capture me and at times I felt the plot about stealing the playboys quite unbelievable. In hindsight though, if it had been released as a teen fiction I think I would have rated it another star and wouldn't have been so critical in my mind.
This book is at times funny, but does not work as a plausible or compelling adult fiction. Re-release it as a teen and it would do much better.

This was a light, fun book about coming of age in the 80's. About being different and nerdy and not wanting to disappoint your friends, but at the same time wanting to get the girl. The writing is fluent and entertaining and the book is fun and I read it in a heart bit, even knowing nothing about programming.

Recommend to everyone who was raised in the 80's and wishes to spend a good time with a book.

The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak by Simon & Schuster is a funny, nice, book with a lot of thematic inside, some of them heavy and this book is just apparently light.

Every nostalgic ex teenager of the 1980s will love it so badly.

Robert Redford in 1987 hadn't won yet any Oscar, the movie this gang of three friends loved to watch compulsively for 18 times Kramer vs. Kramer with Dustin Hoffman. Not bad. A gang of intellectuals but teenagers in the 1980s were a mix of all of it. Brain and hormones.

Tom Cruise was the protagonist of Top Gun, Michael Jackson a genius, Carol Alt a beautiful model.

While I was reading this book I thought at the differences of our actual society and the one of the 1980s.

Reality was completely different.
There was a different candor in the 1980s, a different approach to life, there was shame, there was the idea of sin but also there were adults that didn't want to give anything to teenagers or children before their proper age.
This, I guess, for avoiding any kind of hurt in the harmonic development of their personality.


World is now a free land where nothing is prohibited but normal and the old taboos all gone.

In the past society more closed, more structured, and it's in this historical moment that we fall like magically. It's 1987.
World was going on well, people appeared all happy and cheerful.

Problems of course existed but mainly were the ones lived by the protagonist of this book and his friends: how to enter in possess of some issues of Playboy with the current Wheel of Fortune starlet Vanna White in cover without veils, so after all not great problems. Apparently.

It would be a comical book this one because the boys try all their best, spending a lot of money, for searching to buy this magazine but this book wants also to let us reflect, not just smile.

In this little town of New Jersey there is a store owns by a certain Zelinsky and his daughter Mary.
It sells a lot of stuff magazines and newsmagazines included.

Billy Marvin the protagonist of this story is not at all great at school. At home he has a PC. If you lived your teen age age in the 1980s you will remember BASIC, Pascal, Cobol lessons at school.

Well: It wasn't just a story of codes. It was possible also to create games with that PCs and well Billy wants to do this in his life.
A primordial Internet thanks to CompuServe.


Billy thanks to Mary the daughter of mr Zelinsky discover that there is a competition for the best video-game.

The one Billy developed lately pretty embarrassing. It was the imagine of this naked girl and his friends still complaining because not yet perfect.

Maybe The Impossible Fortress a best choice.

The Impossible Fortress is a video-game of a princess and someone who should reinstitute her freedom after a long fight.

Billy abandoned by his dad, is grown up by his mom with a lot of sacrifices. At school he is misunderstood by teachers because not receiving good votes teachers think that he is incompetent, while simply Billy wants to do something else in his life and also, if he put all his energy for the creation of video-games he can't study a lot.

Billy & Friends want to obtain in a way or in another Playboy prohibited to them but how can they do that?

They ask to Billy of stealing the secret code of access of the store of mr Zelinsky. Billy in fact goes there every day for working with Mary at the development of the video game The Impossible Fortress.

And he promise to his friends to do that.

A lot of problems for Billy but Billy won't be the only one who is hiding something important.

Mary will also hide him a secret too big for being shared with lightness.


I can't tell you that you will just find lightness reading this book, because the life of this teenagers very complicated, with problems at home, at school, with love and sex, society, relationship and with the construction of their own character and identity.

I can just tell you that this book is a jewel because it portrays a year the 1987 and a society perfectly.


Thanks to NetGalley and Simon &Schuster for this book.

The year is 1987. 14 year old outsider Billy and his two friends Alf and Clark have just discovered that Wheel of Fortune belle du jour Vanna White is in the latest edition of Playboy, and being hormonally overloaded teenage boys they decide that they need to see her pictorial and will stop at nothing to do so.

Thus a cunning plan is hatched involving a daring heist at Zelinsky's convenience store to not only get hold of the magazine, but to then sell on copies of the pictures to their classmates and make a tidy profit.

Just one problem. The store has an alarm system that needs to be overcome and so Billy volunteers to get close to the owner's daughter Mary and charm the alarm code out of her. This throws up another problem once he embarks on his mission, however, as it turns out that Mary is a fellow computer nerd and might just be the one person who can help Billy perfect his game The Impossible Fortress and win the grand prize in a gaming contest. Billy and Mary begin working together on their entry and become friends which lead to Billy's loyalties being divided between his friends and Mary.

The Impossible Fortress is a charming coming of age tale, set in an era that I grew up in, that manages to successfully walk that fine line between sweet and schmaltz. The four main characters are all believable and likable, and the difficulties and insecurities of Billy's first love experiences took me right back to my own experiences and made me both smile and cringe.

There are a couple of plot devices that slightly misfire, but on the whole The Impossible Fortress was a novel that warmed my heart and had me rooting for Billy and Mary.

If you grew up in the 80s, or have a love of John Hughes films then The Impossible Fortress is a novel that will resonate beautifully and leave you enveloped in a warm fuzzy feeling.

I don't think I've ever read a book such as this before. It's a coming-of-age story at heart, from a boy's point of view and is both charming and hilarious.
Jason Rekulak has summed up the angst of early teenage years perfectly - swinging between doubt and bravado, trying so hard to please everyone and often failing miserably. Billy, along with Alf and Clark are characterised so perfectly to make this one of the most entertaining novels I've ever had on my kindle.
I can honestly say I have loved each and every page .. the story never falters and there are several surprises along the way. Teenage hormones have a lot to answer for!
This is an innovative novel - intriguing and captivating alike and one I would most heartily recommend to anyone who wants to have their mood lifted. A really wonderful read.

I loved this book and all of the characters! So normal, weird and dorky. And the 80s nostalgia didn't hurt. Really fun.

It is 1987. Will Marvin is 14, lives in a poor neighbourhood of Wetbridge, New Jersey, and he has never had a girlfriend. Nor have his friends Alf and Clark. So when they hear that Playboy has just published pictures of Vanna White, the co-host of Wheel of Fortune (and the most beautiful woman in the world) he and his friends know that they have to own a copy. But the only shop that sells Playboy in Wetbridge is Zelinskys Stationery Shop - and Zelkinsky is a crabby old man who doesn't even let kids into the shop - let alone sell then top grade porn.

Will and his friends embark on a farcical plan to get their hands on this precious, forbidden fruit. Every snag makes the plan more complicated, playing for ever higher stakes.

But as Project Playboy escalates, Will starts to grow up and find that his true interests lie elsewhere. In particular, he lives for computer programming and trying to perfect The Impossible Fortress - a game he has written for the Commodore 64. Every chapter starts with some code from this program - apparently they add up to a workable game that is available online - whose contents seem to reflect the theme of the chapter. Thus, when Will starts to despair in real life, we get the procedure for Game Over. It sounds cheesy but it is actually really clever.

Will also gets to ask himself whether the pursuit of real girls might be worth more than the pursuit of girlie magazines. Its a coming of age story with a good dose of questioning what matters in life - is it better to chase school grades or chase a dream; is it better to work for solid money or to spend time with family and friends; to keep his word to his friends or to those he trusts.

This is an emotional roller coaster of a novel made great by the real and vulnerable characters - particularly Will and Mary, his co-author of The Impossible Fortress. They are both young, immature and prone to make bad choices, but both have enough love in them to have the reader rooting for them. And the novel also captures a particular moment in time - before the digital revolution but when the seeds of change were starting to become visible. Those of us who were there at the time can vouch for the authenticity of the atmosphere in The Impossible Fortress.

Overall, this is a quick, light read. There is a lot of humour and even a few pictures (one of which is definitely NSFW, as the young people say (and also not suitable for public transport :-/). But there is enough substance in this to give the reader something to think about when ther last page has turned. I look forward to seeing Jason Rekulaks future work.

I found it quite hard to pitch this book. It seems to be being marketed as adult contemporary fiction but it really does read an awful lot like a YA novel. There's no complex plot or themes and, instead, seems to be a pitch to young men not to act like jerks. So, even more specific than YA, to me, this is a book for teenage boys. Though, quite why a boy growing up today would read a book set in the 1980s, I don't know. So, in summary, I'm not sure who this book is appropriate for, other than perhaps middle-aged men today who want to relive some small part of their youth....

Anyway, as you can probably tell, I wasn't crazy about this book. There are moments where it is genuinely interesting, and it has some nice swerves and loops in the plot, which give it some complexity. And it is a page turner - there's a strong narrative drive - but, by and large, this is not a book that has a lasting impact.

It's 1987 and we are hanging out with Billy, a 14 year old guy in small town America who is concocting a plan, with his mates, to steal a copy of Playboy so they can gawp over the Vanna White nudes that have just been published.

As you can imagine, 1980s references are everywhere. Though they aren't injected with any subtlety - Phil Collins on radios, comparisons with Police Academy characters, girls dressing like Madonna... (But actually the references can be a little out e.g. the girl dressing like Madonna was in laddered tights and fishnets, but that was 1985 not 1987, and a comment about U2 being a one-hit wonder doesn't make any sense when by this time they were already on to their fifth studio album., and dialogue has that 'like' inflection in speech e.g. I was, like, so impressed...' But that is a 1990s thing, not 80s. So though the 1980s is a big draw, it's not that spot on.)

Specifically, however, this story is about Billy's obsession with computers, particularly coding games for his commodore 64.. And, in that, this book is spot on. Billy is a nerd with a growing obsession with girls but none to talk to. So when his mates' plotting to steal a copy of Playboy ends up with Billy having to sweet-talk a shop owner's young teenage daughter, his head and his heart come into open conflict - he wants to still join up with his mates' planned escapade, but a growing affection for Mary, this young teenage girl, starts complicating matters.

The burgeoning relationship between Billy and Mary is one of the book's high points. It's believable, full of awkwardness, and Mary is a complex, well drawn character. But this is where a female audience will find this book difficult: Mary is portrayed as fat, and the level of bullying and taunts over her weight from the boys may be truthful (I was never a teenage boy, so I can't comment) but it is so enduring and ongoing in this book that it is hard to read. Painful, even. It is constant and you do feel, as a female reader, that this is a book not for you and it pushes you away.

The stakes are pushed high in this story, which is what makes it compelling, and the plans to steal this Playboy magazine soon get out of hand. And in both halves of the story - Billy's relationship with Mary, and the plot to break in to the shop with the magazine - I was pleased to see adult themes explored. In that way, this does make for an interesting coming-of-age story.

However, as a woman, I just wouldn't recommend this book to any other woman. There may be enlightening passages and themes here for men and young boys, but to a woman, it's just disappointing. And for girls, downright dangerous. We have enough issues with self-esteem in young girls without adding this to it.