The Possible

Gr 9 Up—In this absorbing psychological mystery, adopted 17-year-old Kaylee's ordinary life (softball, best friends, school, a crush on a boy) is drastically altered after Liana, a producer of a Serial-like podcast, asks to interview her about Crystal, Kaylee's birth mother, who claimed to have telekinesis as a teen. For most of the past 13 years, Kaylee has tried to forget Crystal and the knowledge that when Kaylee was four, her eyewitness testimony helped sentence Crystal to prison for killing Kaylee's two-year-old brother. Her mother insisted she didn't do it, and Liana intends to prove whether Crystal's powers are real. Kaylee's "what ifs" resurface as the unexplained events that she suspects she might have caused over the years make her question whether she has paranormal powers, too. Her obsession with Crystal and her past threatens her relationship with her loving parents and with Aiden, her best guy friend, and forces Kaylee to take a hard look at herself. The narrative's structure, with its podcast excerpts, texts, emails, and copies of documents, adds to the book's appeal. Most of the characters are fleshed out, except Crystal, who remains maddeningly underdeveloped. Kaylee is not always an easy character to like, given her sometimes insensitive attitude toward others, but her characterization seems authentic considering her lived experience.