These Impossible Things

A Read With Jenna Book Club pick!

Three best friends navigate love, sex, faith–and the one night that changes it all–in this novel that reveals “ searing and poignant truths about the female experience” (Ashley Audrain, NYT bestselling author of The Push)

Whatever happened to the way we were?

It’s always been Malak, Kees, and Jenna against the world. Since childhood, under the watchful eyes of their family and community, these three best friends have had to navigate love, sex, faith, and womanhood alongside the expectations of being good Muslim women. But they’ve always done it together.

Malak wants the dream: for her partner, community, and faith to coexist happily, and she’ll even break her own heart to get it. Kees is in love with Harry, a white Catholic man who her parents can never know about. Jenna is always the life of the party, even though she’s plagued by an unshakable loneliness. But when their college years come to a
close, one night changes everything.

As their lives take different paths, in the wake of heartbreaks, marriages, new careers and new beginnings, Malak, Kees, and Jenna need each other more than ever. Can they forgive and find a way back to each other in time?

These Impossible Things is a moving paean to youth and female friendship–and to all the joy and messiness love holds.

Salma El-Wardany is a writer, poet, and BBC broadcaster. As a half-Egyptian, half-Irish woman her work focuses on telling the stories of women, especially women of color, that have for so long been ignored. She has contributed to the anthology It’s Not About the Burqa, and her writing has also appeared in Huffington Post, theMetro and she has given two TedxTalks.