Reviews with content warning for Child abuse - Mister Impossible

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Mister Impossible by Maggie Stiefvater

19 reviews

thalia16's review

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adventurous emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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trintrin's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

It is always said that second books, especially in trilogies, are supposed to be the weakest links. Why then do I always end up loving the seconds in series more than anything else. What a fantastic read to start off the new year.

Addressing the elephant in the room first. That title was the reason I didn't really want to read this series immediately after reading The Raven King, and it doesn't make it any better after finishing and loving this book. Maggie whyyyyy ಥʖ̯ಥ

Ahem, now, where do I start. This book feels so much more... cohesive? than the first one. Like the characters blend in with each other so well, in a good way. Where Call Down the Hawk was more plot-focused with splatter of good characters, this one was beautiful characters with a plot where you don't fully understand but vibe with. Sort of like a call back to TRC. Where Carmen and Parsifal didn't vibe in the first one, her and Lilliana were an outstanding duo here. Where Ronan was either on a solo mission or with his brothers in the first one, he's with Bryde and Hennessy here, and what a fantastic trio they made! I love their chemistry so much.

The highlight of this book, and the entire trilogy for me, has been Declan. What a pleasant surprise from the Declan we saw in TRC. It feels so nice to see the character you kept rooting for actually turns out to be a decent person.

I respect and love him for every decision he made here, and I hope it only gets better for him from here on. All he needs to do is have a real, grown-up conversation with Matthew and marry Jordan to reach perfection.

He deserves a tight hug and some warm hot chocolate.

JORDAN MY GIRLLLLL

I'm so, so, so proud of her. Creating a sweetmetal all on her own? Having a heart-to-heart with Matthew and making him feel better? Knowing exactly why Declan is doing what he is doing? Girlboss behaviour, marry me please. Or marry Declan, please. That's fine too.

I felt very lukewarm about Farooq-Lane in the first one, because I loved her character, but also needed some development from her to fully adore here. And we got just that in this one.

Absolutely in love with her bagging Lilliana AND dumping the Moderators in one smooth move. GO CARMEN

Matthew, what an absolute sweetheart. His POVs always ended up breaking me.

I really enjoyed all of his little identity crises moments. Him talking to Jordan definitely seems to be helping, I hope he can find a way to accept his conditions. All he needs to do is have a chat with Ronan now.

HENNESSY, I cannot put into words how much I love Hennessy. She felt very different for the first half of this book. More talkative — was she always talkative? — less self-destructive misery.

But then she had to go into her twisted backstory and good lord. I feel so bad for thinking miserable-Hennessy back into existence. That was actually Messed Up™ . I hope my girl gets a good, happy ending. I feel like she's going to be killed off, now that Jordan can live on her own and doesn't have to rely on her dreamer, and evil authors seems to love killing off twins, and also because Hennessy doesn't seem to have a romantic pair yet, and god it's so easy to kill her off and blame it on her non-existent raison d'être or the Lace or any of her past trauma. But I'm hoping against hope she pulls through and gets the happiness she deserves.

It is an absolute CRIME Adam Parrish is not in this book as much as I want him to be.

Really got my hopes up seeing the plot venture into the very familiar ley line territory thinking our ley line expert is going to play a bigger role. Guess not. But I adored the few scenes where he did show up. Smelling out Bryde's fishiness, getting Declan to act on it, not being mad at Ronan for whatever he's doing, attempting to repeatedly scry into his dreamscape even after that disastrous phone call. Speaking of that, why does every book have to end with a cliff-hanger of Adam ༼;´༎ຶ - ༎ຶ༽ wdym he's letting his mind wander farther from his body while the ley line cut out. Adam please be okayyy. Not sure what's going on with his duckling friends but we need him to be okay to find out

Getting to the biggest part of the book, THE PLOT TWISTS. Because WHAT THE ABSOLUTE FUCKITY FUCK?

No, in hindsight, I should've seen it coming. What are the answers to some of the major plot twists in TRC? "Ronan dreamt into being." Chainsaw? Ronan dreamt into being. Matthew? Ronan dreamt into being. Cabeswater? Ronan dreamt into being. It was so obvious, the way Bryde communicates through trees out of anything. It screams Ronan. The way he was so harsh on Ronan, but not that useful to solve Hennessy's problems, the way he was described in the same way as one of Ronan's dreamt up mindfuckery would be described. GOD the evidence was right there. Bryde, oh, Bryde. Knew he was fishy. Couldn't help liking him. Fell into the exact same trap as Ronan did. Man, I feel so sick. All Ronan wanted was just a teacher! Someone to guide him, someone who knew better than him. Fuck Niall Lynch, seriously. This is all his fault. What an asshole

Ronan, please let's just go back to being a gay catholic street-racing farmer, shall we?

Content Warnings

booksandstardust's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

sophiesmallhands's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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aaannika's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Screaming, crying, throwing up, some of Maggies best work yet

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ramunepocky's review

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medium-paced

2.0

I am extremely conflicted about this book. It is pretty much common knowledge that The Raven Cycle is my favourite book series and that I have three tattoos to commemorate it, and I was extremely nervous about reading The Dreamer Trilogy in general, but I really enjoyed Call Down the Hawk for the most part, was a bit confused by the narrative, yes, disliked some of the characters, yes, but generally enjoyed it and had high hopes for the rest of the trilogy. Therefore, I am very conflicted. Because I did not enjoy most of this book. It was so. Messy. There were so many loose threads that were just being pulled and pulled and pulled and instead of finding the end and connected them all together, there were just more loose threads that were coming out entirely. I wanted it to work. It did not work. It’s like instead of having an overarching storyline or instead of resolving plotlines that had already been introduced, she just kept on introducing new storylines and new plot points. And that would have been fine if it all came together in the end and made sense, but it didn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, there was potential in this book and there were certain aspects of it that I liked. I liked getting to see Jordan have her freedom from Hennessy and I liked seeing her grow into her own person. I liked seeing Matthew stand up for himself and question things a bit more and understand/accept what it means for him to be a dream. I liked. No wait, that was it.

I didn’t really understand why the sweet metals were introduced and the way that they were introduced and talked about originally made it so hard to grasp wtf was happening and what they were talking about before it finally sunk it. It shouldn’t have been that difficult to grasp. Like I know Boudicca is some pretentious group and have all their secrets and whatnot, but that didn’t mean that us as the reader had to struggle sm to understand what they were talking about. I also fail to understand why they were necessary. The concept of a dream living beyond their dreamer is fascinating and I would have liked to have seen it explored, but in an entirely different way, because this was just too convoluted and unnecessary, and I just didn’t get it. It wasn’t satisfying.

I hated Bryde with an absolute passion and really, in the end, the entire thing he’d been trying to achieve was for nought considering Hennessy shut down the whole ley line anyway. I also thought it was a giant cop out that instead of him being another powerful entity or dreamer, he was just another dream of Ronan’s. Like get real. Come on. And his existence is essentially useless because in CDTH, it’s built up like finding him is some all-important thing then in this, he is just condescending and makes Ronan and Hennessy do a bunch of stuff, and then he’s not really in Greywaren. So pray tell. What was the point???

I love Ronan Lynch with my entire heart, but some aspects of this just felt so out of character to him. And not even the not contacting Adam because he didn’t want to drag him into it. If anything, that was the most Ronan Lynch thing Ronan did this entire book. It irritated me too the way that he trusted Bryde, who he’d known for essentially two minutes, over everyone else in his life, and took his side instead of when, particularly Adam, was telling him they didn’t trust him. Don’t think the Ronan Lynch I know would do that, but okay. I did like seeing his trust and relationship build with Hennessy and them becoming tentative friends, but I also hated Hennessy. She had her moments where she was okay, but she was so unnecessarily cruel, cold, and selfish and it irritated me so much. And I understand that she had a very traumatic past and she says cruel things as a coping mechanism, but the way she treated Jordan particularly frustrated me to no end. Jordan did not deserve that for trying to live her own life free of her, Jordan did not deserve that just because she was happy, and Hennessy was not. And when Hennessy told Jordan that she wished she had died too?? That just wasn’t okay.

I still do not like Declan, but I think this book and subsequently Greywaren too, helped me understand why he behaves the way he does. I feel for him to an extent, but I also don’t like him. If anything, I feel like this trilogy was about him because he seemed to be the only character that had any kind of tie to most of the threads and he was one of two characters that seemed to get any kind of character development.

So yeah. The more I sit with it and the more I think about it, the more unhappy I get it. Maybe one day in the future, I’ll reread this book and like it a lot more, but as it stands, I don’t think I’ll be picking it up again. Or any of Maggie Stiefvater’s other books, but it’s essentially become a proven rule that I don’t get along with any of her books that aren’t The Raven Cycle. All her magic went into those four books and it’s been gone since.

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scrubsandbooks's review

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Okay, very rarely does the second book get better than the first. Or maybe I've read too many series with Second Book Syndrome, I wasn't expecting this to be anything but a filler book between the beginning and the conclusion and hooo boy was I wrong. So much happens, I can't begin to point out exactly what without spoiling it but it definitely added far more context and helped answer some questions I had while presenting even more. The ending though was a complete surprise and I threw myself right into the next book as soon as possible.

Content Warnings

keen's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

sunsorbit's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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msradiosilence's review

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Tldr; Ronan’s self-destructiveness goes on tour, Carmen and Liliana have ideas, and Jordan and Declan look at art.

Read my full review at: https://www.rainyreader.com/single-post/mister-impossible.

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