Who knew collecting eggs was a thing? It was actually a Big thing! I'm a bit of an outlier because I found this book to be a bit odd. The writing felt very stream of consciousness and it took me quite some time to grasp the flow of it. The Impossible Thing focuses on the stealing and trafficking of eggs. Egg climbers would be lowered over cliffs to collect the eggs of the birds which lived there. Depending on the bird and the color of the egg, it could be a lucrative thing/hobby/collection etc. This book is told in two timelines and proved to be a slow burn as eventually the two timelines connect

In the past timeline (1920-1930), Celie Sheppard is tiny and petite. She proves to be the perfect size to lower over the side of a dangerous cliff that no one else dares to go over. She is successful in finding and obtaining a gorgeous red guillemot egg. She does this year after year as crowds gather to watch. My heart broke for the birds she stole from. They fought to save their egg to finally learn it is to no avail and to simply turn its head unable to watch.

Patrick and Weird Nick are in the present day and looking for a scarlet egg that was stolen during a robbery. They go looking and find and learn more than they expected. They are both interesting and great characters.

While I enjoyed the characters of Celie, Nick, and Patrick, this book failed to wow me as it did most readers. I found it too be too slow in spots and I struggled with the writing. What worked were the three main characters and a very unlikeable character that I found myself booing and hissing at.

There are some wonderful descriptions and characterizations in this book. The author did a great job with that. This just didn't wow me as it did other readers.

The Impossible Thing
Belinda Bauer
Grove Atlantic
04/08/2025

I'm always eager to pick up the latest Belinda Bauer novel. Her writing consistently stands out, elevating the crime thriller genre with its depth. She creates well-rounded, engaging characters while maintaining a fast-paced and compelling plot. While crimes do unfold, it isn't exactly a traditional crime story and of course it was great to see Patrick from Rubberneckers return.
Spanning from the 1920s to the present day, the novel paints a vivid picture of the dark and perilous world of egg collecting. It also brings to life the rugged beauty of the Yorkshire cliffs, where diverse seabird species have nested and soared through the winds for centuries. Enter greed, obsession and a crime that started 100 years ago.
The Impossible Thing is a captivating and thought-provoking journey that delves into how the smallest, seemingly trivial actions can lead to profound, life-changing outcomes. Though the premise may seem unconventional at first, Belinda Bauer’s masterful storytelling makes it resonate in the most unexpected ways. For readers seeking a distinctive narrative that weaves through time and generations, this book is an absolute must-read.

Parallel narratives centered around the harvesting and selling of wild bird eggs. In the present day, young autistic man helps his friend track the egg that was stolen from him. The past and much more interesting narrative centers on a young woman who inadvertently becomes a lucrative climmer.

I’ve absolutely loved every single book by Belinda Bauer, which is why I was really looking forward to The Impossible Thing. Unfortunately, this one just didn’t click with me. I really tried to get into the story, but the plot centered around eggs just didn’t hold my interest. I found myself feeling like I could stop reading at any point without much curiosity about what would happen next.

That said, Bauer is an incredibly talented writer, and I’m still a huge fan. This book just wasn’t for me, but it hasn’t put me off at all—I’ll definitely be reading her next one with high hopes!

I had never heard of egg collecting before and I had no idea that it was a thing in the Uk in the 1920's, how barbaric, although nothing shocks me about humanity anymore I don't think. I couldn't put the book down and read it in a day

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me this book. I.had absolutely no idea that egg collecting and egg collections were such a big deal in the 1930s in the UK. The book was interesting, characters well filled in and we'll written. I always appreciate learning new things when I read and this book definitely provided that. But I did find myself losing interest now and again and keeping up with all characters was a bit confusing.

Thank you NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the eARC.
When I saw that Belinda Bauer had written a new book, I was more than excited. It had been so long!
This book is exquisite, so unique, I adored it. The theme of egg collectors in the 1920's is interesting, but quite sad. Those poor birds ... This was one of those instances where I felt disgusted with the human race's greed.
The writing is stellar (as usual) with great characters, including 2 from 'Rubberneckers' in the present time.
The girl Celie in the 1920's is another character I loved.
What a great read!

Off the cliffs of Yorkshire on Britain’s eastern shores, in the 1920s, the locals rappel down to the ledges and steal beautiful, valuable, unique bird eggs. They’re collected and shown off by wealthy gadabouts until the practice is banned a few decades later. Then, in modern times, two oddball English youths try to reclaim a mysterious egg pilfered from their possession and get sent on a…well, I’d say something about a goose chase, but you know. Wrong bird.

I had no idea eggs were a thing. OK, maybe when you’re baking a cake and you’re missing that one darn ingredient. But for a thriller novel? If you’re confused, just do what I did: treat the Metland Egg like another famous literary artifact, like the Maltese Falcon, the Holy Grail, or the vehicle in “Dude, Where’s My Car?” In the process, I learned a lot about bird eggs and its place in British culture.

And speaking of British: for a while there, I had a hard time following the 20th Century lingo until I heard Celie, the young “climmer,” say something familiar. Then I realized: it’s Yorkshire! They were speaking in the accent heard in The Secret Garden! Oh! I art daft, or something. Once I adjusted my ears, I could follow the story.

Again, the unusual object of the caper made it a little perplexing for me at first. But at about 40%, the action picks up, and the intrigue increases. The heroes and villains started to make themselves better known, and Bauer makes them complex and vibrant.

Patrick, one of those modern goofs seeking the Egg, made for a terrific sleuth. He takes everything literal and his “slowness” in human emotions leads him and “Weird Nick” in the right direction. They were real underdogs, and their little plan was simple, relatable, and in the end, rather genius. Their action starts and doesn’t let up.

The 20th Century story seemed slower, but more personal. We get more of a description of Celie’s world there: a detailed look at the cliffs, the farm, and the people’s situation. Oh, I really disliked Ambler! Just like we were meant to. You’ll love to see what happens there. The character voices seemed genuine, and the historical settings and occurrences accurate. I felt like I was living through both times. The storylines never merge, but they connect via the artifacts in a satisfying way.

Adventure in eggs: who knew? A zippy, irresistible thriller with a quirky plot and likeable characters (except for one!). Worth a good, hard look. But no egg puns, please! That would be egregious.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for an advance review copy in exchange for an honest review. The Impossible Thing will be published April 8, 2025.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

To start off strong, this book is firmly one of the most evocative that I have read so far, with a coastside so strongly described that you can almost taste the salt in the air and feel the wind in your hair. The book follows a few different timelines, one covering the difficult history of egg-collecting and selling, marred by tragedy, and the other a modern-day mystery revolving around an egg heist and the seedy underbelly of egg-nicking.

I did not realise that something so mundane as collectable egg specimens would have been as fascinating as this was, and yet, here we are. Driven forward by interesting characters who all have their reasons for their actions. I did find that the egg heist veered a little into cosy mystery territory, with relatively low stakes, and I definitely found the historical perspective the more interesting one, but the modern day is handled with grace.

Perhaps the most interesting character is Celie, a young woman with the kind of gumption rarely seen in historical accounts from the era, but often present and ignored. She is headstrong and manages to (without spoiling too much) hold her own against some fairly severe forces in the novel. I did wish that there was a little more focus on the twist towards the end, as it felt a little rushed between the rest of the action, but all in all this was a firmly middle of the road read for me.

While recognising the powerful, allusive writing of Bauer's style, I just took a very long time to become engaged with what's at stake here .. I 'get it' (finally) that gathering the right eggs early on, and in quantity, provides real income for people, and that there are dangers involved (a precarious locale provides a significant plot device here), but I simply found it all so distant that the only way I gripped on was recognising that the poverty and difficulties of the people engaged in this form of farming were high stake.. to point of murder and theft .. so even though I admire its artfulness and effective characterisation, there was a credulity issue for me ... I look forward, as ever, to more of her work.. (and, yes, as other readers point out, the familiar rubbernecking (sp?) character was intriguing to meet here ...)

I am always excited to get the next Belinda Bauer book. Her writing is a step above the basic crime thriller. She develops interesting characters and keeps the plot moving.
This book is a little different from her previous books. Although there are crimes committed it is not a crime story.
I was glad to see Patrick from Rubberneckers back, he is a great character.
This is a book that tells about the little known obsession( at least to me) about collecting birds eggs. The story goes back in forth through time about finding the rare and precious Metland egg. I love reading about things I knew nothing about and Bauer always has the skills to make in interesting.
Thanks to net galley for providing me with the chance to read this terrific book.

This was, I think, my favourite of Bauer’s books. The storyline is very creative and innovative and is really intriguing. I would highly recommend it to everyone.

4.5/5
Hugely captivating, this book had me locked in. I'm of an age that, when younger, I had friends who would collect bird's eggs - that memory came flooding back. And I have to say I felt a sadness and guilt due to the telling of this story.

Beautifully written, with engaging characters and and an emotionally charged storyline, this had me completety gripped.

The overlaying of the plight of the poor birds with Celie's life will stay with me.

I was delighted to receive an arc of The Impossible Thing as I have enjoyed other books by the author and this was a great addition to her storytelling repertoire. Set between the 1920s and present day, the dark and dangerous world of egg collecting is described vividly and so too the landscape of the Yorkshire cliffs where the varied breeds of sea birds nest and soar through the air currents as they have done for millennia. The story and characters were written impeecably, I enjoyed the friendship between Nick and Patrick and the denouement was incredibly satisfying.

Thanks to Netgally and Grove Atlantinc for a chance to read this wonderful book before it's published in exchange for an honest review.
I always loved Belinda Bauer's writing, and especially after meeting her at a writing course I was able to appreciate her writing process even more.
This novel is a shiny example of good writing. Meeting Patrick Fort again was a wonderful surprise (we met him in "Rubbernecker" - 2013). Patrick is on the spectrum, and he is such a wonderful, good and funny character. Also, we have another storyline, set in 1920-1930, that I loved very much. I am so sorry not everyone of those wonderful characters got the happy ending they deserved. But some bad guys definitely got their share of justice!
This is a wonderful novel because it's different, you can't compare it to anything else, and because some of the characters will stay with me for a long time. I wasn't expecting anything less from Belinda Bauer Highly recommended!

Before reading this book I had no idea people actually collected eggs. I am was amazed at the lack of integrity and the determination of these people who wanted to complete their collections of eggs...no matter what the cost.
This is the story of a crime that was unsolved for almost 100 years. It centers around a priceless red egg.The story jumps back and forth between today and almost 100 years before. There is a beautiful love story hidden in these pages where 2 misfits find each other. The greed of man is the big theme here. Even though egg collecting is outlawed men still will want to have egg collections. It made me wonder what is next to collect after ivory, alligator skins and birddogs have been made illegal.
This is a beautifully written book. Read it, you won't be disappointed

Belinda Bauer is a crime writer from Wales who frequently turns up in the crime fiction awards lists – winning a Gold Dagger for Blacklands, as well as the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year for Rubbernecker. I’ve always enjoyed her books, and would find it hard to pick a favourite, but Rubbernecker was, I recall, a cracker – following the story of a young autistic man and his determination to deal, in his own way, with the death of his father. In Rubbernecker, Patrick signs up for an anatomy class, where groups have to examine a corpse to determine cause of death. It’s his mother’s idea – a way to help him get over his obsession with dying. And this is how he gets tangled up in solving a murder.

With The Impossible Thing, Patrick is back. At twenty-three, he is still happily living at home wth his mum, working at a pub and playing computer games badly with friend and former classmate Nick from next door. When Nick and his mother are subjected to a home invasion, the only thing missing is a guillemot egg in an elaborate case, which Nick had found in the attic and advertised on e-bay. He’s selling whatever he can find to pay for a new gaming chair. It seems bizarre that someone would go to such lengths to steal something as unassuming as an egg, until a little digging throws up the illicit world of rare-egg collecting.

It seems guillemots nest on cliffs, clustered in such tight proximity with each other that the mother bird lays a distinctive egg that will be easy to recognise among all the others. The colours are so varied, collectors would vie to obtain the most unusual. This is now quite illegal, but a hundred years or so ago, men would dangle on ropes over cliffs every nesting season to pick out eggs that they could sell. Which is how me meet our other main character, Celie Sheppard.

Celie is so different from her dark, robust looking siblings, her father disowns her and abandons the family to manage Medland Farm themselves. Her mother leaves baby Celie in the care of Robert, the “idiot” boy who helps on the farm in return for bed and board. Celie survives rather than thrives, and the two make an odd pair, both ignored by the other Sheppards. Egg collecting is a nice little earner at neighbouring farms but at Medland Farm there’s a rocky overhang making it impossible. Until skinny little Celie tells Robbie she can fit through a crack in the rock if he’ll hold her rope.

"Robert never ventured on to the overhang. He didn’t say so, but Celie guessed it scared him to be on the sliver of rock with nothing beneath it but air and – finally – sea. It scared her too, but she loved to look through this crack into another world.
Now she put her head into the V again and watched a puffin return to its ledge twenty yards down with a rainbow full of quivering sand-eels. From here she could see hundreds of birds pressed against the cliff-face. And, as they shifted about, glimpses of eggs of every size and colour that she could imagine. They had chickens in the yard, of course, but they laid dull little brown eggs, and never enough to eat, only for selling. These eggs were two or three times that size, and speckled and spotted and splattered with brown and black on backgrounds that ranged from cream, through blue to green. Celie had never had a toy, but the thought of holding such eggs in her little hands made her nearly smile, with a feeling that was beyond hunger."

Celie’s story is one of ambition and trust, heroes and villains, love and also tragedy – particularly for the poor bird who gives up her very saleable egg every nesting season. You’re taken into the world of egg collecting – not just the perilous procedure involved, but also the greed and one-upmanship among the traders and collectors.

Nick and Patrick are also an unusual pair, but are oddly complimentary. Patrick is very smart but lacking in social awareness – something he realises and is working on. Nick isn’t all that bright but can be chatty and friendly. As even owning a rare, collectible egg is illegal, Nick refuses to get the police involved, so the two set about tracking down the stolen egg themselves. This will put them in the path of danger, as well as highlighting the motivations of egg obsessives, natural historians, wildlife custodians, and vigilantes.

The Impossible Thing is another cracking read from Bauer. I loved it, although the animal cruelty described is not for the squeamish. Bauer balances Celie’s more poignant story with the humour of Nick’s situation, his often at cross purposes dialogue with Patrick, their hare-brained schemes. There are some madcap action scenes, and the pace picks up to finish the story with a flourish.

This is also a very original novel, not only in its source material but with its two main characters, both outsiders, but both very likeable. And this makes it interesting. I am not sure if Bauer will bring Patrick back for another adventure, but I was delighted to meet him again and enjoyed his quirky smartness. The Impossible Thing is a four-star read from me.

The Impossible Thing will be released at the end of February. I read a proof copy of the book courtesy of Netgalley in return for an honest review.

If someone had told me I would find a book about bird eggs as captivating as The Impossible Thing, I’d have thought they were losing their mind. But I am pleased to admit that I was wrong—I thought this was book EGGtremely good!

The Impossible Thing weaves together two distinct timelines, one set in the 1920s and the other in the present day. Despite the gap in time, the story remains profoundly interconnected, with the actions of past characters echoing in the lives of their modern counterparts. The symmetry between the two timelines is executed beautifully, with the historical narrative providing a poignant backdrop to the contemporary one. Bauer does an excellent job of intertwining the two, creating a sense of continuity and resonance between the characters of yesteryear and today.

Bauer's characters are rich and nuanced, their lives and struggles incredibly compelling. The way the modern characters' actions are shaped by events long past feels almost like a meditation on fate, choices, and consequences. The link to bird eggs, a seemingly odd subject at first, reveals itself as a metaphor for fragility, hope, and the impossible.

I had previously read one of Bauer's earlier works, and while I enjoyed it, it didn’t quite captivate me the way The Impossible Thing did. This novel drew me in completely—I couldn’t put it down. There’s something magnetic about Bauer’s writing; it’s tender, precise, and effortlessly engaging.

In conclusion, The Impossible Thing is a thought-provoking and immersive read. It’s a story about the small, seemingly insignificant things that can have life-altering consequences. While the concept might initially seem unusual, it’s a testament to Bauer’s storytelling skill that it works so brilliantly. For anyone interested in a unique narrative that spans time and generations, this is a must-read.

Thanks to Belinda Bauer, Grove Atlantic, and NetGalley for access to the Advanced Reader Copy of this book in exchange for a review.

What a unique and interesting story! The is a historical novel recounting the time in England where eggs were collected by the nation’s elite. Poorer people risked their lives to collect the eggs and the more unique the egg coloring, the more valuable they are for the collectors.

The story is a fictional account of the collection, sale, loss and obsession of eggs and the true mystery of the real Metland Eggs, which were highly prized and lost. Moving between the 1920’s discovery and present day, the book is a well written story anchored in a true-life mystery. Recommended!

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book. Bauer did a great job bringing to life the unusual characters in the two timelines of the book. I was unfamiliar with egg collecting as a hobby and the "industry" that developed from it. I was happy to learn that it has become illegal in many places now. I found this bizarre period in history fascinating. The abject poverty of the farmers in the early 1920s in Yorkshire was eye-opening for me as well. The contemporary story also dealt with the now outlawed (in the UK) collecting of eggs. Two young men accidentally get involved when one discovers a valuable egg from the 1920s. They soon find that the egg collectors are still operating illegally and ruthlessly. I enjoyed this unique and surprisingly suspenseful historical mystery.