A lovely book of love and family.

This book had many aspects to it and because of that is enthralling.
Partly otherworldly with a little time travel thrown in as well
as a touching account of family ties that bind but mostly it
Is about love. It was a great read and I can really recommend it.

(Also reviewed on Amazon UK and Goodreads)

Rowan Coleman is one of those authors I'm constantly recommending as she's not as widely known as she should be. Her writing style is beautifully lyrical and her stories are always thought-provoking and complex. The Summer of Impossible Things is another stunning success and one I'd definitely recommend.

My thanks to the Publishers via NetGalley for the opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review. I gave this a 3 stars or 6/10.

I have read quite a few of Rowan Coleman's books in the past and the majority of them I have enjoyed. However, I loved the premise of this story about Luna, Pia and their mother. How the future and past intermingled with one another to relate this time travel story. I was a little disappointed though with the execution of it.

I so wanted to really enjoy it, but my enjoyment of it was marred due to several inconsistencies along the way, that could have been overcome with some better editing. The reader is steered in certain directions, which isn't always a bad thing but I did have my suspicions that all wasn't going to be as it seemed. Call me a cynic or maybe I was just able to read between the lines.

This story has divided readers with many completely entranced by it and then those of us on the other side of the divide. Grab a copy for yourself and see which side you will be on.

I have to admit that I read this book quite a while ago but never quite got round to writing the review. I think perhaps it was because everyone seemed to be raving about the book, and while I enjoyed reading it, I wouldn’t rave about it.

I don’t normally read books that could be classed as a romance, or about time travel (although I did love the time travellers wife) so this book was definitely going to be a bit different, and it certainly was.

There was so much that I loved about this book, the characters were great, the two sisters relationship was great and I really liked Luna, the main character. While I found the whole time travel thing a bit hard to get my head around, and the dark world that Luna found herself in when she travelled back in time was uncomfortable reading at times. But the story was clever, unexpected and emotional.

This is the first Rowan Coleman book that I’ve read but it won’t be the last, she clearly has a great mind for storytelling.

Thank you to the publisher Ebury Press for a copy of The Summer Of Impossible Things by Rowan Coleman via Netgalley. I was under no obligation to review the book and all thoughts are my own.

I was hooked to The Summer of Impossible Things from the start.
If you could change the past would you? Luna will do everything she can to change the outcome for her mother even if it means it might change her life.
A great read, well deserving of 5 stars.

Oh, I loved this book so much! I didn’t read it... I devoured it! So well written, well paced and well developed, I could find no fault with The Summer of Impossible Things by Rowan Coleman. 2 days later and I’m still consumed by this book and not quite ready to move on to the next on my reading list!

The Summer of Impossible Things is the story of Luna and Pia as they revisit their mum’s old home and neighbourhood in Brooklyn, New York. After their mum’s death, they find she’s left them a video revealing a long-kept secret about herself and her past. The girls travel to Brooklyn and stay with her old neighbour Mrs Finkle. Mrs Finkle’s home is filled with photographs and memories of their Mum as a young woman. Luna soon realises that there are big differences between the confident young woman Mrs Finkle describes their mother as, and the woman they loved and grew up with. Overwhelmed by the emotions of visiting their mums old neighbour and still devastated by the heartbreaking loss of losing her mother, Luna goes to visit her mums old home. When she reaches the home she collapses on the sidewalk next to the house. When she wakes a little while later, she can hear music and talking from the long-since abandoned home of her mother. From here Luna’s world and her understanding of science and impossibility are thrown into chaos as she tries to understand what is happening to her.

I don’t want to spoil anything about this book as I hope everyone who reads it enjoys it as much as I did! The book reveals everything at just the right time and Luna is so very likeable. I could imagine her Mum as a young woman and the neighbourhood and her friends. It was just so we’ll written and enjoyable.

I think this is the first Rowan Coleman book that I’ve read and I’ll definitely read more of her work based on this book.

Thank you so much to Rowan Coleman, NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Wow! What an astonishing story. This book touched me on every level. How far would you go to save your loved ones from a tragic event from the past and if it is possible could we do it.. I had no idea how this would end but it had me gripped all the way through. The characters, the story, the setting were all magic and you felt you were on Luna's journey with her. I hope this get's made into a film. It deserves to be. This is one of those stories that stays with you. Absolutely amazing. I will be telling everyone to read it and dream the impossible.

I really enjoyed this book. I found it fun and interesting - I really enjoyed the whole 'time-travel' aspect of the book and, of course, the happy ending. There's a few hard themes in the book that the writer works around beautifully, and as mentioned above, there's a happy ending - so that's great!

The main character in this novel, Luna, travels in time but only to and fro between the present and a very specific time in the life of her recently deceased mother, Marissa. Something terrible happened to her mother at that time (the summer of 1977, in an area of New York where the filming of Saturday Night Fever is taking place) but also something wonderful. She met her future husband Henry and fell in love but, it appears, she was also raped by a man who should have been a pillar of the society she lived in. Luna, armed with this information, befriends her mother (known as Riss in 1977 and a bit of a live-wire, far from the depressed shell of a woman Luna remembers) and tries to discover the identity of the rapist. When she realises that her actions in 1977 are causing changes in the modern-day she decides to try to prevent the attack taking place altogether. Because she was the result of that rape she has to come to terms with the fact that, by preventing it, she will cease to exist (in a Back to the Future stylee...)

A really interesting story and well told. I didn't work out who the attacker was until shortly before the reveal and I loved the descriptions of 1977 New York. If you are a fan of slightly quirky women's fiction then this could be your beach read (or, even better, Central Park read) this summer.

Having recently read 'The Memory Book' I was very keen to get started on this one, and wow what can I say apart from its brilliant, I couldn't stop reading it.

I cannot praise this authors books enough, they are amazing. I will be looking out for more books to read shortly.

Highly recommended and another 5 stars.

This book was different to other ones I have read by this author but I loved it just as much as her other books. The interlinking of aspects of the story in time travel books fascinates me and I thought the author did this really well. I was kept guessing with this book and felt lots of emotions throughout reading it. It is a book that will stay with me for a long time.

If you saw things that no one else could see, you'd probably assume you were ill. That's exactly what Luna thinks at first, until she manages to get evidence and proves to herself that there is far more to this. She can travel through time, to the days just before she was conceived, and has the chance to change everything to save her mother. But can she risk erasing herself? This book is so full of emotions and sensations that you can actually feel what Luna goes through and experiences.

This is a love story, with believable time travel - so it’s already onto a winner. And it’s not just romantic love, but also mother/daughter and sister/sister love that seeps through the pages. It starts with Luna processing her mother’s suicide. Her mother has left video messages, explaining a traumatic event in her youth, and how she could never escape it. When Luna finds she can go back in time, she tries to change to past to save her mother.

It’s a sweet, engrossing, page-turner, that I was completely sucked into. Beautifully written and based on a wonderfully sad premise. I loved the action and the romance and the sisters, as well as the deft way Coleman dealt with the ramifications of time travel. But I felt the dark heart of Luna’s predicament could have been explored more. The tagline reads: “Luna is about to do everything she can to save her mother's life. Even if it means sacrificing her own.” But while that threat is ever-present, I wanted more from it.

Following the suicide of their mother, Luna & Pia discover their mother had been keeping a secret for the last 30 years. She had been attacked & raped, and its consquence led to the birth of Luna. However, the guilt of knowing she had murdered her attacker ate at her soul, leading her to end her life.

Her daughters return to her mothers birthplace of Brooklyn to sell their inherited property. Once here, Luna is able to transverse between the present & 1977 where she meets and befriends her mother before the attack happens & falls in love with Michael but knows she cannot be with him. Luna is willing to sacrifice her own life to by changing events to stop the rape taking place. Will she be able to change the past and not break her own heart at the same time?

I enjoyed this story and how the small changes Luna made in the past rippled through to the future and could be seen by her sister once she returned. I enjoyed the link of the area with the film Saturday Night Fever, and the power outage. The links between the two time lines were cleverly interweaved, the sadness of the death of their mother and how she'd clung on until she knew they could cope in their adult lives was well wriiten. Overall the ending was a nice surprise as it took a turn I did not expect.

A very unique storyline, loved the 70’s vibe. Took a little while to get into and to work out the time travel.
Really enjoyed the strong characters. Well worth a read.

With an intriguing message in the prologue, The Summer of Impossible Things caught my imagination from the off and kept me in its grip throughout.

Luna and 23 yo sister Pia are on their way to their mum’s childhood home to settle her estate in Brooklyn. I thought the journey was a great way to find out more about what makes this family tick.

A property that’s been empty for a long time is co-owned by their aunt and there is mystery surrounding the total lack of communication between their mum and aunt. It’s not long before Luna travels back to 1977 and with the house being pivotal, spends time with her mum and her group of friends, getting to know them and trying to work out what she needs to do to make a difference.

I’ve always enjoyed sci-fi and often have the ‘what if’ conversations so for me there was no leap of faith or suspension of belief needed. Rowan Coleman made me feel as if it was my body making the journey. It felt so real … as did the time spent in the past! I fell into this world easily.

The twist had my head spinning, going back over what I knew (or thought I knew!). So much tension during the blackout.

This is a dual timeline with a difference! I loved that Luna got to see the side of her mum that was full of hope and ambition rather than withdrawn and hiding away. I loved not knowing what would happen as Luna time travelled and came back to the present. What (if any) changes would be made and how would it all end? Would she get her happy ever after or was that entirely impossible?

With a great pace, easy to identify with lead character, awesome setting and unique plot, The Summer of Impossible Things is a story that will enthral you and tangle you up in knots.

One of my top reads for 2017.

I couldn't get on with this book, sorry. I still might go back to it as I have seen great reviews (maybe it wasn't the right time). Thanks for approving me though - very much appreciated.

Such a unique book! I truly felt like I'd been transported to Brooklyn and was connected to Luna and her sister. Time travel in books can sometimes seem a bit far fetched, but I was totally in the zone reading this and could imagine that it really was happening. Fascinating, and one of my favourite reads this year.

Oooh, 1970's New York. That'll be crime and corruption, disco, rap and punk, the emerging gay scene, social unrest, racism and violence and drugs and gangs and prostitution. What a rich tapestry to pull some threads from, I thought to myself. You could write a brilliant novel in that setting. So I was pretty disappointed when Rowan Coleman chose to pretty much ignore all of those things and instead wrote a fairly bland story about time travel between then and the present day, where the characters mostly hang out in someone's house.

The story begins with Luna and Pia, two sisters who go back to Brooklyn after the death of their mother to tie up the loose ends of her estate. They find that their mum has posted them a box of films of herself from years ago, telling them the secret which has haunted her for her whole marriage. But -and this is where it gets weird - Luna discovers that she can time travel. At first she thinks she's having some kind of hallucination but then decides that it's happening for a reason - and that reason is to stop the events that lead to her mother's depression. The story then bounces about between the present day and the 1970's, where Luna gets to know her mum as a young woman and starts to work out who was involved and how to stop it all from happening.

I found this premise pretty ridiculous. Everything else in the book is set completely in the real world so the whole time travel thing came out of nowhere and didn't really fit into the story well. For example, Luna tells Pia about her newly acquired skill and with very little persuasion and no evidence Pia accepts it. Surely any normal person would be convinced that their sister was ill?

There's also a love story between Luna and Michael (who she meets in 1970's Brooklyn). I thought their relationship was very sweet but nothing much happened between them, so I felt the whole thing fell a little flat. I also thought it was a bit far fetched for a couple to fall completely in love with each other when they'd only met a few times.

There's a further additional side story where we find out that Pia is a recovering drug and alcohol addict. Because this was mostly glossed over I wasn't sure why it was mentioned within the narrative - I thought that the author could have done a lot more with it (or not mention it at all).

However, the one thing that stood out for me was the character of Luna' s mother, Riss. I loved how she was depicted as a young girl, full of sass and excitement. It's just a shame that the other characters weren't written as vividly as she was.

Overall, I felt that by adding in storylines which the entire novel could have been based on, the narrative became a little confused. To me, it felt like five or six different stories all mashed into the same book, with no room for any of the ideas to be properly explored. I would have loved for the characters to get out more, with better descriptions of Brooklyn in both time periods. I really struggled with the time travelling idea and thought that the situation was dealt with in quite a clumsy manner. However, as the novel progressed the main storyline picked up pace and I was genuinely interested to see how things turned out. It's just a shame that I had to get two thirds of the way through the book before it really grabbed my attention.

I would say 3 1/2 stars. Not sure whether i liked this book or not. Was good but very time travllers wife esq. enjoyable with good character. Just not sure.