Forbidden: A Review by Eva Márquez
Title: Forbidden
Author: Tabitha Suzuma
Pub Date: May 2010
Genre: Young Adult
Publisher: Simon Pulse
ISBN: 978-1862308169
Price: $9.99
Pages: 464
Synopsis
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.
My Thoughts
Forbidden is a tragic love story, with no happy ending…but then I suppose, this is why it is tragic. If you have been reading comments left by other reviewers, you have by now determined what kind of love story, this is. Even though it was a love story based on a mutual love of a brother and sister, separated in age by not much more than a year, it never bothered me because of it. I realize some readers may find this type of relationship disgusting or at the very least, wrong…however, the way the author approached the subject and through her writing style/story line and through her development of the characters often times made me forget that this was a brother/sister relationship.
Lochan and Maya, brother and sister, aged 17 and 16 have been in essence abandoned by their alcoholic mother and have been forced through their mothers actions to be the “parents” of their younger sister and two younger brothers. They cook, clean, shop, are responsible for their siblings school, medical needs, and anything else a parent is responsible for. Even though the responsibilities are demanding, they seem to be able to handle them while relying on each other for support. It is this “working” together for a common ground that has drawn them together over the years.
The family has its share of problems, mainly caused by the abandonment of their father when they were all much younger, and their mothers alcoholism which has definitely caused and undue hardship on all family members. The two youngest children seem to be the least affected, but do feel abandonment issues. The middle brother, approaching his teens is resentful of Lochan as the surrogate father, and demonstrates his confusion by rebelling and causing trouble, acting out, and reusing to follow the rules of the older siblings, Lochan and Maya. For me as a reader, Lochan is really a basket case, and has more issues/problems with life than anyone. He can hardly cope with life, can’t speak to his peers in school, can barely speak to adults, and clearly is a very atypical teenager. I really saw him as a loser, and at times couldn’t feel much sympathy for him at all. Maya on the other hand seemed to know what she wants, is level headed, and has no interpersonal difficulties at all.
As their relationship progressed, Maya proved to be the stronger one of the two, and Lochan was clearly the weak link, finally culminating in an ending I half expected, but yet as I was reading had hoped for a positive conclusion.
This was a love story, with no winners. It was also a story that for me, tended to drag on for pages and pages…with too much emphasis placed on Lochan’s inability to be normal. With the exception of that, I felt it was well written.
My Rating
