Dan has been having a hell of a summer. His dad came out as gay and walked out on his family. HIs mom is depressed and unable to get her wedding cake business off the ground. His family has lost their money and has to move into a fixer upper of a house. And he has an unrequited crush on the girl next door, Estelle. He’s come up with a list of goals for the year, six impossible things beginning with kissing Estelle and ending with being a better person than his father.

Six Impossible Things is a fun read. Dan is a witty, self-deprecating narrator, who starts out pretty bitter at the state of his life, yet really develops throughout the course of the story. There’s a scene near the end where his mom comments on how much he’s changed, and while he initially brushes it off with his sarcasm, it’s such an on point observation. It’s to the author’s credit than Dan’s growth is so subtly done that I almost didn’t realize it happening, and didn’t really appreciate how much he’s grown until now, when I’m writing this review and remembering how he was like at the beginning of the novel. Dan is far from a perfect boy — he’s pretty much a jerk to his mom in the beginning, and he straight-up spies on Estelle at some points — but he’s also sweet and lonely, and the kind of boy you want to hug and reassure that it will all work itself out somehow. His development feels real, and his challenges and emotions throughout – both positive and negative – feel real as well.

The book’s weakness is that, with the exception of Dan, the other characters are all pretty flat. Estelle is the standard quirky beautiful crush next door, Dan’s best friends are fairly typical snarky outsiders, and even the man who lives in Dan’s shed — a mysterious, cool older brother type — doesn’t end up being memorable. Dan’s mom is probably the most interesting secondary character, and it was amusing to see the her story arc progress with Dan being so completely clueless that he was blindsided by a revelation near the end. I especially loved the depiction of why her wedding cake business was doing so poorly — the reason is both hilarious and moving, and made me wish her story was more in the forefront.

Still, overall, this is a funny and endearing book. It’s easy to get caught up in Dan’s story, and it’s fun to see how the things that seem so impossible to him at the beginning of the tale turn out to be quite possible after all.

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Thank you to Hachette Book Group Canada for an Advance Reading Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.