The island of Lark is fogbound for much of the year, attracting those who seek refuge from the world. Three strangers arrive, changing the dynamic of the tight-knit community. Ben Hailey, a teacher who draws the attention of the women; Viola Kendrick, a student who is very secretive; and her mother, who, along with her daugher, are seeking a new start. Three girls take Viola into their circle, changing the group and its traditions. When a body is found one morning at the girls' meeting place, will the secrets of Lark finally come to light?

I honestly just could not get into Impossible Causes. I did not forge a connection with any of the characters and found the story to be both familiar to other books and also completely odd. The desolate setting was well described, but that was not enough for me to want to recommend this to other readers.

Disclaimer: I was given an Advanced Reader's Copy by NetGalley and the publisher. The decision to read and review this book was entirely my own.

I am not sure how I missed reading this in 2019, but it just showed up on my Kindle! This book was hard to get into. I never connected with any of the characters, and there were so many of them! Too much religion and bad sex scenes. The writing felt a little old-fashioned, maybe on purpose? I wish I had liked this book more, the premise was really great.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review - I found this book a little too slow for my taste. I could not get into it and it was very predictable. I was surprised by the heavy religious influence included in the book as well.

***Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review***
A creepy setting could not save this from being a little too slow for my liking. I could not get into it and I could easily guess what was happening.

I am sad to say that despite repeated attempts, I could not get into this one. I think it was the setting and the stilted language, mixed with the heavy religious plot. It was on so many "best-of" lists and I was so excited to read it, but it turns out to not be my cup of tea. Thanks for the opportunity!

Published by Bloomsbury on November 19, 2019

Impossible Causes is a Me Too novel, telling a story that demonstrates the collective power of women who finally reveal their stories of abuse. It is also a novel about the corruption of power, a story of men who seek or hold power so that they can abuse it. The framework of the story, involving a remote British island whose religious inhabitants fear witchcraft, is so farfetched that it robs the story of its drama, and the story is so contrived that the title might more accurately have been Impossible Plot. There is much to like about Impossible Causes but the novel’s flaws nearly outweigh its merits.

Leah Cedars is a virgin when Impossible Causes begins. She has a teaching post on the forgotten British island of Lark, an island populated by a religious community that does not welcome the outside world. People not born on the island are known by the derisive term coycrock. Women with black hair, like Leah, are revered as bearers of good luck, but Leah —known to all as “Miss Cedars” after taking a teaching position — feels she has no luck at all. Her brother has fled the island as have many others. Some have chosen to run from evil rather than confront it.

In addition to Leah, the islanders who are most significant to the story are Viola Kendrick and three girls who are approaching adulthood, known collectively as the Eldest Girls of St. Rita, the name their school shares with the patron saint of impossible causes (as well as abused wives and heartbroken women). We learn in the first pages that Viola has found a body, but it is only in the last pages that we learn the body’s identity. The novel jumps around in time to build a backstory of events in 2017 and 2018 that lead to Viola’s discovery.

Viola is a coycrock who craves the acceptance of the Eldest Girls. She is also a drama queen and an attention-seeking liar with a history of making false accusations. She would have been a more interesting character if her lies had not been so obvious.

Other significant characters are Saul Cooper and Ben Hailey. Saul is the island’s Customs Officer, not quite twice Leah’s age but nevertheless smitten with Leah, an attraction that Viola encourages and that Leah does not shun. Saul’s competition is Ben, a young teacher (the first male in that role, apart from the headmaster) who is newly arrived from the mainland. Leah feels destined to fall in love with Ben thanks to a reading of Tarot cards.

Ben also befriends the Eldest Girls, who seem to be monkeying around with witchcraft or summoning the dead while prancing about in the nude at one of those a mystical circles of stones that seem to be everywhere in British fiction. Ben is suspected of playing a role in the slaying of a goat and in the Eldest Girl’s suspected use of the goat’s heart as an effigy to cause a death. Whether Ben has monkeyed around with the girls and/or the goat, whether he is a good or bad guy, is one of the novel’s suspense-building questions.

All of this is background to a plot that leads up to the Me Too moment. While the story attempts to illustrate how women (and men) might remain silent when confronted with sexual harassment and other forms of sexual abuse, the odd setting robs the story of its power. The women on Lark apparently remain silent because they are on Lark and thus unaware that women are no longer putting up with subjugation by men. The fact that women in the real world remain silent is a more compelling story than the one told in Impossible Causes. The behavior of women on a male-dominated religious community doesn’t tell the reader much about the behavior of women in a less artificial and more modern setting.

When the Me Too moment finally arrives, it feels too contrived to be meaningful. The novel’s other key dramatic moment, involving the body Viola discovers, also comes across as a contrivance, an unlikely event involving mistaken identity that exists solely to create drama without regard to its improbability.

While the events of the novel take place in the very recent past, the story seems like an attempt to engraft modern themes (including Me Too) onto a time when people still believed in witchcraft. I suppose an isolated religious community (its leaders refuse to allow the construction of a cellphone tower) might be reality challenged, but I wasn’t convinced

I admired the novel’s character development (apart from the Elder Girls, who have no obvious motivation to monkey about with witchcraft) and I enjoyed Julie Mayhew’s prose. Some of her provocative passages (“Women are the true masters of deception, have always had to be. They don’t get to decide which of their behaviours are virtues.”) might spark interesting book club discussions. The story’s suggestion that religious intolerance and power are destructive forces, while not an original thought, gives the novel some weight. Balancing the positives against the negatives, I can only say that readers who are drawn to the message or the prose without concern for the story’s plausibility will probably like the book more than I did.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Great read. The author wrote a story that was interesting and moved at a pace that kept me engaged. The characters were easy to invest in.

“Lark was a religious community: participation was expected, baptism a stipulation.” “...but soon the fog would descend, making Lark unreachable. Unleavable. There would be no more ships until April.”—from Impossible Causes.

Atmospheric combination of The Village and Carrie sets the scene in this coming-of-age gothic horror thriller. I expected to love Impossible Causes. But somehow I never fully believed the plot. However, if you like a heavy atmosphere and some of the lesser M. Night Shyamalan movies, you may enjoy it. 3 stars.

Thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

Impossible Causes by Julie Mayhew is a dark mystery/thriller that also crosses into paranormal horror. The story in this novel is one told from different points of view from an atmospheric, isolated island of Lark.

Viola Kendrick has moved to Lark with her mother after the tragic loss of her father. Also arriving on the small close knit island is Ben Hailley, a new young male teacher. All of the locals are infatuated with so many new comers to an island of less than 300 residents. Soon Viola meets a trio of local girls that are called the Eldest Girls who begin to welcome Viola into their group just as rumors of devil worship and witchcraft begin.

Impossible Causes is one of those novels that is an incredibly slow burning thriller, the kind in which have trouble holding my attention taking so long to make sense of the story. I found the setting quite creepy and intriguing but then toss me into a high school waiting for something more and it didn’t take long to realize this one wouldn’t be a favorite. The book does pick up in the second half but for me this wasn’t enough to make it an enjoyable read as I much prefer faster paced novels that immediately pull me in.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

For me, Impossible Causes, had so much potential. It could have went more Wicker Man and in a crazy direction. It showcased Feminism and the #MeToo Movement, but it was so heavy handed and in your face that I could see many people being put off by it. Or Julie Mayhew could have focused on more folklore or more on witchcraft.

It took me until 40% before I even started getting into the book a bit, mainly wondering how it would all play out. And here I got a little excited thinking it would be full on witchcraft or demons. Then Mayhew pulled back again on what could have been.

There was no shock factor when it came to the ending. And actually the ending annoyed me because Mayhew is writing how horrible society is in regards to the way it treats women, and then the ending is tied up in a neat little bow. I feel if you are hitting such heavy topics then you need to be realistic with the outcome.

The reason I gave it a three stars instead of a lower score is Mayhew does bring up topics people need to talk about more and figure out ways to change them for the better. So that is wonderful. And writing a book is hard work, so anyone who not only finishes it, but gets it published has (hopefully) put in the time.

This is not one that I will be recommending that you even add to your TBR to read at a later time. Instead try I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, or Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.

Impossible Causes by Julie Mayhew was creepier than what I expected. As I’m reading about these people on this isolated island all I could think about was the movie WITCH. Tons of suspense and in all honesty, I can’t get these characters out my head and if that’s what the author was out to do, well she succeeded.

Thank you, Netgalley & Bloomsbury for gifting me this copy. I am forever grateful.

The arrival of three new people to isolated and insular Lark Island is the catalyst for a lot of bad things. Leah, a teacher, is the narrator of this odd mixture of horror and murder mystery and it is through her eyes that the odd cultish nature of the group living there is seen. Viola, a teen who has lost her father and brother, is subjected to the Eldest Girls- think Mean Girls upgraded. Ben, who has come to teach, is the subject of much attention until ...no spoilers. It reads quickly and there's a fair amount of topical issues suggested if not right out declared. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I wasn't sure what to make of this initially but on balance it's a good read.

For the first time since joining Net Galley, I have a book I couldn't finish. I wanted to like this one, I really did. I read others' reviews to see if I was alone and it seems I am somewhat. I found it hard to follow, the writing style itself felt cumbersome and held me back from getting invested. I got through a quarter of it and just couldn't do it anymore. Thankful for the ARC, sorry I didn't love it.

Mayhew tells an original, evocative and well-plotted story. This novel was a deep look into the psychology and gender politics of an isolated UK island community. The author describes the religious fervor, hypocrisy, and fear of the occult that often seen in historical fiction, but with the twist of a modern day setting, and an ending that's reflective of today's attitudes toward sexism and movements against sexual violence. For me, the novel was a little lengthy for how much action took place; I expected a bit more of a thriller and the shifts between narrators and timelines were at times a bit confusing. Still, unlike anything else I've read recently. I received a free ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

There's a disconnect between the summary and the actual book: yes, Lark Island is isolated and fog-bound, filled with secrets and tight-knit. But the religious aspect? Missing. I had thoughts this could be like <i>Harvest Home</i> or <i>In the Night Wood</i> (etc. etc.) yet that's not the case. So my next thought was that it could be like <i>And Then There Were None</i> or any other locked room-like mystery. Again, not the case. Instead it's relatively easy to guess what the Big Secrets are and what will happen. What a waste of setting!

eARC provided by publisher.

This book was a slow start but built up to a story that reveals silence as complicity in the face of evil. I would recommend this book to people who enjoyed “Women Talking” and “The Handmaid’s Tale”

Since Halloween is fast approaching I love reading spooky books this time of the year. The blurb of the book caught my attention but sadly I couldn’t get into this story at all. There are so many different timelines that at times it feels confusing to me. I really didn’t connect to the characters and I found the story to be slow and boring. It was a struggle to read 60 pages and since this bad boy is over 400 pages I decided to tap out.

This had a lot of potential, I really liked the setting and concept. Unfortunately I did not enjoy reading it, the writing was very choppy and confusing. I felt like the story was too disjointed to really slip into and the pacing was all off. I don't think the writing was particularly bad, just unpolished, like reading a rough draft. I would definitely try more by this author even though I didn't enjoy this book.

Oh, here we go. Yet another one of those feminist dramatic thrillers about remote communities that promise utopia and deliver oppression instead. Impossible Causes takes place of a remote island of Lark, far off the coast of UK. There a small community survives in a more or less self sustained manner, virtually cut off from the world at large for 7 months at a time or so. The community is religious, ruled by men…and surprise, surprise, abusive to women. So as the book progresses, we are slowly cued into the levels and pervasiveness of the abuse, especially as it centers on the Eldest Girls, a few 16 year olds with Charlie’s Angels differently colored manes. Eventually, again to no one’s surprise, but maybe the islanders themselves, accusations of witchery start up. Well, of course, they do. You can’t just be all insular and backwards and pressive to woman and not mention witches. So that’s about it, really. The narrative alternates in a slightly confusing manner from one of the Eldest Girls (a newcomer to the island) to a teacher, a local spinster at the ripe old age of nearly 30,who’s been there for a long time. Their experiences and perspectives vary to provide a panoramic view of the situation, especially as it gets exacerbated by the arrival of a hunky new male teacher. The book is as atmospheric and claustrophobic as these stories tend to be and there’s even attempt at an old supernatural darkness, but in general it doesn’t really do much to merit the time it takes to read it. And I went into it deliberately ignoring the overall tepidness of others’ reviews, because I do so love a good isolated community/utopia gone to sh*t/ cult like story, but…but in the end I must agree, kind of a tepid book. Some reviews mentioned disliking the split narration and other things, but for me it was mainly that the story just wasn’t original enough and I didn’t especially care for any of the characters. I know, that’s fairly vague, but just now sure how much specificity I can provide. It isn’t even necessarily the book’s fault, the writing was perfectly ok. It just didn’t engage me on any level. Which may very well be a personal reader/book lack of chemistry. Albeit one experienced by a good number of other readers also. On a positive note I was able to speed read this thing, so it only took (almost to a second) 240 minutes to get through 429 pages. Being a completist who compulsively finishes every book I start, it was nice not to be stuck with one I didn’t especially enjoy for a long time. So yeah, that’s it, pretty standard modern feminist message fiction, pretty bland. Quite slow. Wouldn’t recommend it, but user mileage may vary. Thanks Netgalley.

This one here was a little difficult for me, as there was a story to tell and one to discover, but it took way too long to really get into it. And believe me, I tried. Especially with those first chapters, but it was touch and go there for the most part. If anything, the mystery that surrounded Lark island was something that needed solving. And so, I kept on reading.

That's when some of the mystery started unravelling, and more of the actual story came into focus. It had its interesting parts, but again, sadly, not enough. Not that it wasn't an intriguing concept, just not done in a way to wholly keep me invested. That says a lot, because I very much tried to connect to many of the girls here, their story was definitely one to tell. Somehow, knowing how heartbreaking their lives were, the words on the page left me a little empty.

The concern that kept growing for me, was if it was ever going to change around. And, it seems, that most of that change came in the last few chapters of this novel. It picked up the pace a little too late in the story though, but glad that at least it gave me another reason to finish this off. Because, everything gets wrapped up in those chapters, revealing to us the rest of the craziness and darkness that surrounds Lark and those that inhabit it.

Be aware, that the craziness involved in this novel is filled to the brim. There are a lot of twisted religious views, women treated like servants of man (in every single way), traumatized youth, hidden secrets that would make one wish they didn't exist in any imagined world. That's only a portion of this novel, and for me, along with the slow burn, couldn't keep my enthusiasm for this book. I'm aware that's how it's supposed to be, but it never ended up working for me.

***I received this copy from Bloomsbury Publishing via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.***