Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma

Title: Forbidden
Author: Tabitha Suzuma
Series: Stand- alone
Pages: 432

Release Date: May 27th, 2010

She is pretty and talented - sweet sixteen and never been kissed. He is seventeen; gorgeous and on the brink of a bright future. And now they have fallen in love. But... they are brother and sister.

Seventeen-year-old Lochan and sixteen-year-old Maya have always felt more like friends than siblings. Together they have stepped in for their alcoholic, wayward mother to take care of their three younger siblings. As defacto parents to the little ones, Lochan and Maya have had to grow up fast. And the stress of their lives—and the way they understand each other so completely—has also also brought them closer than two siblings would ordinarily be. So close, in fact, that they have fallen in love. Their clandestine romance quickly blooms into deep, desperate love. They know their relationship is wrong and cannot possibly continue. And yet, they cannot stop what feels so incredibly right. As the novel careens toward an explosive and shocking finale, only one thing is certain: a love this devastating has no happy ending.



I hadn't heard of this book until my affiliate Amber Skye posted her list of Top Ten Most Intimidating books. I decided to read it, intrigued by the completely socially unacceptable topic.

I ended up with mixed feelings about it. I liked the characters individually, and if they weren't brother and sister I would have LOVED for them to be together. It was just difficult to get past the mental block of the true, blood relationship between the two. 

In a way, it was understandable that Lochan and Maya realized they were "in love" instead of loving each other like normal siblings. They had grown up as though they were the parents, a single unit together to raise their younger siblings after their dad left and their mum subsequently became an alcoholic. They had to grow up at 13 and 12, taking over as the primary caretakers while in school and trying to evade child services. 

Instead of having other friends, Lochan and Maya had each other for everything, and didn't grow up as though they were siblings, but more a mix of a parental unit and best friends. 

Throughout the book, there is the slow and steady development of their romantic feelings for each other. If it were a normal book, it would have been a good pace. Not too fast and unrealistic, however, there were  some parts that were boring and I contemplated not picking the book up again. It probably could have been reduced from the four hundred and something page book.

There were many references throughout the book to Romeo and Juliet and Wuthering Heights, both romantic and dramatic stories with sad endings. I think the references were a clear foreshadowing technique that left me weary for the ending. In the end, I found the book to be emotionally confusing, sad, but ultimately potentially uplifting with a fairly good message mixed in with the emotion.

Would I reread it or recommend it to read? Probably not. But I don't regret reading it, nor do I feel I have wasted my time.