Book Review: The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak

Blurb: Billy Marvin’s first love was a computer. Then he met Mary Zelinsky.

Do you remember your first love?

The Impossible Fortress begins with a magazine…The year is 1987 and Playboy has just published scandalous photographs of Vanna White, from the popular TV game show Wheel of Fortune. For three teenage boys—Billy, Alf, and Clark—who are desperately uneducated in the ways of women, the magazine is somewhat of a Holy Grail: priceless beyond measure and impossible to attain. So, they hatch a plan to steal it.

The heist will be fraught with peril: a locked building, intrepid police officers, rusty fire escapes, leaps across rooftops, electronic alarm systems, and a hyperactive Shih Tzu named Arnold Schwarzenegger. Failed attempt after failed attempt leads them to a genius master plan—they’ll swipe the security code to Zelinsky’s convenience store by seducing the owner’s daughter, Mary Zelinsky. It becomes Billy’s mission to befriend her and get the information by any means necessary. But Mary isn’t your average teenage girl. She’s a computer loving, expert coder, already strides ahead of Billy in ability, with a wry sense of humor and a hidden, big heart. But what starts as a game to win Mary’s affection leaves Billy with a gut-wrenching choice: deceive the girl who may well be his first love or break a promise to his best friends.

At its heart, The Impossible Fortress is a tender exploration of young love, true friends, and the confusing realities of male adolescence—with a dash of old school computer programming.

Review: The Impossible Fortress turned out to be such a fun and cute story. I enjoyed it immensely and I think it has all the elements that make a story unique and special. It tells the story of a teenager, Billy, who is obsessed with computers and video games. But not video games as we know them now, it's set in 1987, and as you can imagine, computers back then were rare and exotic machines that very few understood and even less knew how to actually create with them.

The story starts with Billy and his two loyal friends scheming a plan to get a Playboy magazine, where you can see the prettiest woman in America naked. They need to see those photos, and they will go any length to get them. Their plans though, are not the most bulletproof ones and they end up in the most strange situations. But in the middle of their planning, executing, more planning and discussing, something happens. Billy meets Mary. Mary turns out to be even better than Billy with computers and video games. From then, we witness Billy and Mary getting closer and a beautiful friendship developing between them, something his friends don't really understand.

I really liked Billy as a character. He was naive and easily influenced, but he had a huge heart and tried really hard to always do the right thing, even if it was kind of uncool. I loved seeing him and Mary getting closer and how they shared their dreams. I also found Mary's father a very interesting character. He just seemed cold and rude at the beginning, but once you knew more and more about Mary and him, you could understand him better.

As I said, I had a lot of fun following Billy and his friends around. I think the story was clever and touching and the writing was good. It's a story you can fly through in a few hours but you will enjoy immensely. 

Rating: 5 stars

I would like to thank the publisher for sending me a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.*