ARC Review: The Impossible Girl by Lydia Kang

4/5 stars 

First of all - look at the cover! Look at it! It's so beautiful. Was the cover the reason this book caught my eye? Absolutely, I am a cover whore after all. And then I read the description and I was completely sold! 

When I was reading this book a thought sprang to mind "this is what "Stalking Jack the Ripper" should have been. Minus Jack the Ripper. There are a lot of similarities between the books, but they are also very different from each other.
We have the strong feminist character, who is actually a strong feminist character - not just pretending to be one, the macabre world of the dead bodies and dissections, and a mystery.

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The Impossible Girl was impossible to put down for the first 50 percent of the book. The plot was moving beautifully, the main heroine, Cora was a delight to read about and the topic was  fascinating. I loved, loved Cora's secret identity! It was just such a cool perspective to read from.

The other 50 percent of the book dipped pretty low on the fascination scale - it was a bit too repetitive for my liking and few things happened that left a bad taste in my mouth. But it did pick up later on with a roller coaster speed and I was back engrossed into the world of living and the dead. The plot twist, while I myself figured out early on (I just read A LOT of mysteries when I was a teenager so honestly not many things can surprise me) was still pleasant from the writing point of view. It was definitely done the correct way. And the madness that ws uncovered with that twist? Disgustingly brilliant! 

Things were pretty bad for a while for poor Cora, and when you think they couldn't have gotten worse, they of course did. I'd say that the last 20 percent of the book were pretty stressful to read through. Which is how it should be in a mystery book! 

​I can tell that this book was brilliantly researched and I genuinely enjoyed all of the medical things portrayed in it - and I am the world's biggest hypochondriac! For the side characters I enjoyed Suzette a lot, which I didn't expect myself to do and I liked Dr. Blackwell, but I wish she got more page time to be honest - there was so much more potential to her. 

​Some parts were laced with pretty great humor which made me laugh out loud. There was a part which made me feel very unconformable and I was flabbergasted at how  Cora had no proper reaction to it whatsoever. If I saw what she saw I'd be scarred for life, but I guess she was a very tough girl after all. 

This will be published in the late September - perfect in time for Halloween, when all of us crave macabre books! I definitely recommend! 

Big thanks to Lake Union Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with a digital advanced copy for a review. All opinions are my own, honest and come from the heart.