Review:  Forbidden

Author: Tabitha Suzuma

Publisher: Simon Pulse, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Source:   Personal Copy

Chapter Twelve
Maya

He is the first to break the silence. “Maya, what the hell are we doing?” Although his voice is barely more than a whisper, he sounds close to tears. “I don’t understand: why - why the hell is this happening to us?”
   I close my eyes and press against him, stroking his bare arm with my fingertips. “All I know right now is that I love you,”  I say in quiet desperation, the words spilling out of their own accord. “I love you far more than just as a brother. I… I love you in -in every kind of way.”
   “I feel like that too…” His voice is shocked and raw. “It’s - it’s a feeling so big I sometimes think it’s going to swallow me.  It’s so strong I feel it could kill me.  It keeps growing and I can’t - I don’t know what to do to stop it. But- but we’re not suppose to do this - to love each other like this!” His voice cracks.

Excerpt from Forbidden page 173

Lochan Whitely is only seventeen, on the cusp of turning eighteen, and he carries the weight of the world on his shoulders.  As the eldest of the Whitley children, he juggles with the task of being a replacement father figure for his younger siblings: thirteen year old Kip, Tiffen, and five year old Willa.  Through it all, his sixteen year old sister Maya has been his sole consolation in finding peace in the chaos of managing a family, where an errant mother’s responsibility is thrown to the wind.

Lochan and Maya find themselves hard pressed to hide the reality of their mother’s care since Social Service is only a knock away from taking their family unity and separating them permanently.  A mother, whose only source of gratification is her own pleasure, desperately clinging to the nostalgic semblances of her past beauty and power to attract the wrong type of men.  Her children are at the bottom ladder of priority, rather they hinder her pursuits and viewed as a sore source of cash expense.  Imbibed and completely lacking of maternal instincts, she strives to break Lochan’s spirit at every turn.

Through many intense and dysfunctional hardships, the two siblings Lochan and Maya discover love, however it is a love that neither can approach without fear of reprisals. They discover that “love”  knows no boundaries, nor can they stop their hearts from beating for they have fallen in love with each other. 

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Tabitha Suzuma’s Forbidden can only be described as a mesmerizingly tragic tale of love. She engulfs you with brillant writing and exudes a profound talent for taking your breath away as you embark in this very highly emotionally charged tale of  forbidden love.  The plot is a fully charged and loaded gun that’s going to blast you into smithereens for the very topic it demands the reader to confront. 

Her distinctive style is paramount for her imagery and turbulence of teenage angst.  Lochan and Maya are tragic lovers who have fallen in love in what is an impossibly insane & frighteningly immorally incestuous relationship. At the onset, I was appalled by the very thought, yet as the story progressed I found myself unequivocably haunted by their plight. Little by little, I came to believe that perhaps their story had a meaning that could not be explained nor justified by the moral standards of our society.  Their love could not be denied nor vilified since their realities made them who they were. 

I loved the innocence carried by both main characters, Lochan and Maya. They were victims of circumstances and had fate been kind they would have chosen differently.  It is this shared life experience that made them turn to each other, hence the passionate convictions that endorsed their love despite the indignation of blood ties.  Their strength and commitment to love is unbreakable and I could not help but wish for the plausible “if”. 

Considering the topic, this novel may not be your conventional type of read, but if you do want to take a chance… This is a book you will never forget.

As much as I cringed and screamed a litany of curses from “how could they???” “what in the world can they be thinking??”  “He’s her brother!” “She’s his sister!”  and “Don’t go there!”,  I found myself desperately clinging to hope.  A hope that they might be able to disappear completely from their harsh world to newfound identities elsewhere. As terrible as it may sound, I wanted them to be free to love far away from all the backlash of society’s rules. 

Now that is a feat in itself, this is what Tabitha Suzuma has been able to subtly accomplish via her words. She has won over my allegiance for Lochan and Maya’s tale oflove. Forbidden will haunt you long after you have finished the last word.  Thought provoking and breathtakingly well written.  

I tore through it in one sitting and could not tear myself away. I felt as if I were possessed by her words and when I did finish, I felt obsessed by one thought… “What if”…. What if the implausible could be plausible… “What if?’”

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Note: I had originally reviewed this book last year DEC 2010 and was excited to hear that it was FINALLY hitting the North American market in 2011.

This book was just released to the general public this week, so I HAD to shout out to everyone on this coast… GET IT!

In celebration of its release, I decided to re-post this review since it is a book that will leave you utterly moved for its haunting strength.

I will definitely be placing my SIMON & SCHUSTER Forbidden copy - ablaze in red on my shelf tonight.