A coming-of-age story set in 1987. What could be better than that? Not to mention 3 teens scouring for a copy of Playboy that Vanna White's featured in? The quest these kids go on makes for a great story and brings back nostalgia, making this book even more appealing.

I loved the idea of the premise for this, but I just couldn't finish. I got roughly half way before I gave up and moved on to better things.
The writing and characterization just seemed to immature, and I couldn't connect with the story or the characters. This just might be the case of "it is me, not you," and I sincerely hope others find enjoyment out of this.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

The Impossible Fortress was set in 1980's and brings nostalgia. Billy, Alf, and Clark are obsessed with Playboy that released pictures of Vanna White. Their determination was strong that they will do whatever it takes to get a copy of the magazine including stealing it. All characters including Mary, the store owner daughter where Billy, Alf and Clark planned on stealing a magazine, are funny and intriguing. Mary is a strong woman and who wouldn't love some like her? What I didn't like in the story is that it is in slow-paced and there was a lot fat-shaming. The Impossible Fortress is an okay-read, I mean I didn't hate it nor like it, it's just okay. To be honest, I'm thrilled after reading the plot and immediately request it, however, I somehow lose my interests because of some flat parts.

I loved this book! This is a fun and compulsive read that took me back to my childhood in the 80s. This seems a part of the popular nostalgic format and I'm not complaining. Rekulak has written a compelling and engaging coming of age story centred around 3 teenagers and their adventures tracking down photographs of the beautiful Vanna White.

There is a little coding explored but luckily this isn't all-consuming as I wouldn't have been able to keep up! I was pleased that the coding was based on the Commodor 64 gaming system...a great nostalgic throwback for me. Reading this reminded me of the tv series Stranger Things combined with Ernie Cline's Ready Player One, the major difference being The Impossible Fortress is much more lighthearted.

I'm intrigued to see what the author's next works will bring as I will certainly be looking out for them.

This is another novel that I received through Netgalley that kept getting pushed to the bottom of my to read list. But I found myself in bed late one night without something to read and started this novel on my iPad, thinking I would just read until I fell asleep and start something else the next day. The next day I wanted to keep reading. I enjoy books set in the 1980s, being a child and early teen during the 80s, and this one brought back memories of freedom. Freedom to roam the neighborhoods, freedom to get into trouble, and freedom to get yourself out of it. Sometimes. My children are growing up without these luxuries. The characters were engaging and the story was heart-warming. This one was a fun throwback!

It's the 1980s, computer programming is starting to become a thing, and Billy and his friends are obsessed with getting their hands on a copy of Playboy featuring Vanna White. While at the store while trying to help his friends conceive a plan in which to buy said Playboy magazine, he and his friends concoct a scheme that involves the shop owner's daughter, Mary, and feigning interest in her to get her to get them that magazine. Billy volunteers, and the two become friends once Billy discovers that Mary is interested in computer programming, too. 

I really wanted to like this book more than I did because it looked like something that's right up my alley: computer programmers, the 80s, a cute growing up story. However, it ended up taking a weird turn about three-quarters of the way through the book that just seemed uncharacteristic and unrelated to all of the build-up that had happened in the rest of the book. While the main characters are fourteen or so, each of the boys can be unbelievably cruel in one way or another. Billy's cruelty is the most unbelievable and is the catalyst for the finale, and then the consequences are just pushed away as if none of it really mattered.

The Impossible Fortress started out cute, light, and enjoyable, but ultimately took a turn for the worse. It's a shame because it had so much potential!

I received a copy of this book for review through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

A great ride and a fun, light read for older teens and adults who lived through the 80s.

Such a clever story. I really enjoyed the format and they way it was presented. It was great to dig into the lives of these boys. A story I wouldn't usually read, but really did enjoy.

Billy, Alf, and Clark are teenage boys of the 80's in search of their holy grail, the Vanna White Playboy issue. Jason Rekulak has created characters and storylines that you can completely imagine happening. Of course nothing goes as they plan. Of course, things go from bad to worse. In spite of the story arc, you may be surprised by the outcome, and in a positive way.

When I read descriptions that recommended this book for those who like Ernie Cline, I knew I needed to read it. The amazing thing is that it has the 80's references, yet it is entirely different, and yet still a wonderfully fun read.
I received this as an ARC, my opinions are solely my own.

I was actually pleasantly surprised by this book. I thought it would either be too computer based for me or just not interesting but was happy to be wrong about that.
I loved all the 80's references and the story line was entertaining and captivating. I found myself rooting for the characters and it quickly became a page turner that I couldn't put down until i finished.

Funny, charming coming of age novel set in 1987, where the scheme of the narrator and his friends to get their hands on a copy of the Vanna White issue of Playboy leads to an unexpected friendship with a girl who shares his love of computer programming. Pitch-perfect evocation of the 80s, and so fun and funny but with a lot of heart as well.

What a good book! I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this story. I was totally sucked in by the characters and know that I would have loved it even more if I was a child of the 80s myself. This book was quirky, unique, fun, and refreshing. I recommend!

I loved the description of this book so much, I requested it on NetGalley and checked it out from two different libraries. When I finally read it, I was NOT disappointed! Billy Marvin and his friends are obsessed with getting a copy of Playboy with Vanna White's spread. After a couple failed attempts, it's decided that Billy will befriend a shopowner's daughter (Mary) in the hopes of getting the store security code and eventually the magazine. But Billy and Mary are both obsessed with computer programming and soon strike up a genuine friendship. The only problem is Billy has to hide his friendship with Mary from his friends.

The Impossible Fortress is a nostalgic read that made me laugh out loud. Definitely recommend it!

Thanks NetGalley!

This book's strength is also it's weakness. It so strongly embodies the attitudes and behaviors of teenage boys growing up in the 80s. In some ways this makes for a wonderful and nostalgic read perfect for fans of John Hughes., but at the same time it makes for some really painful and uncomfortable moments.

Not for me. I think I'm the wrong age group though.

Billy and his friends are coming of age in 1987, and they come up against, get mired in, or are individually able to resist sex, crime, and the Commodore 64. Light and funny – I read this after reading The Vorrh (Brian Catling), which was really weird and dark, and The Impossible Fortress was a perfect palate cleanser. Read if: You want a mash-up of Stand by Me and Microserfs.

So many things about this book feel like the sensational Stranger Things meets The Rosie Project. Set in 1987, three boys set off on a quest to acquire a copy of Playboy with Vanna White on the cover. The resulting adventure involves love, video games, and doing anything to see a naked celebrity. It is sweet and delightful and also captivating.

I regret that I didn't finish this book in time for its publication. Regardless, it's a charmer of a book that I really enjoyed. Any fiction that takes place in the 1980's when I grew up is a book after my own heart, and this one did not disappoint. I especially loved Mary, though I would have liked a little more of her.

<http://freshfiction.com/review.php?id=62648>

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.