When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook, and no plan. Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend's life and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past. Filled with wonder and wild adventure, this is a story of hope and the life-changing power of a new beginning.
The novel keeps evolving — from grief memoir to murder mystery to environmental battle, sliding along a slick surface of greasy New Age truisms ... My objection to the sentimentality sprinkled over The Life Impossible is not that it’s emotional excess; it’s that it’s emotional aspartame. Yes, of course, fantasy can be a comfort in times of despair, but prescribing a story as silly as this one in response to a heartfelt confession of grief and depression feels like recommending brighter wallpaper as a treatment for termite damage.
Though Grace engages in near-relentless self-loathing, Haig draws her with wisdom and heart ... A sinister hotel development plot and its predictable villain lack the juice of Grace’s arc ... Affecting.
