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This thread is open to discuss Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma



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 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.

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Chava, I'm okay with whatever schedule you want to follow :)

Me too! I am so looking forward to this...

I can't take it out of the library due to COVID restrictions so can only read it as an ebook. There's 26 chapters plus an epilogue. Do we want to do 2 chapters a day? That gets us through in 2 weeks or so.

That maybe a little too slow, I'll probably forget the start of the story haha! Can we do 5 chapters a day?

Split the difference: 3 chapters a day?
Including the epilogue that's 27/3 so we'd finish in 9 days.

Lol cool, sounds good! Will start on August 21 :)

Sorry guys, I work full time and have all kids studying from home. I'm in Australia where we're in total lock down. I am a front line worker in mental health and we are inundated at work. I will try my best to do 3 chapters, but I might not be able to keep up. That's okay though, I'll just follow from the back :)

No worries, Chava! This BR was your idea and we don’t want to leave you behind. We’ll see how things go. :)

Ooh I didn’t know! Sorry, let’s go back to 2 chapters a day :)

If the book it good, it'll be hard to read slowly. If the book is not good, it would be hard to read fast.

The struggle is real!
:D

Lol I know 😂

All set with my copy of the book :)

Me too! Resumed my Scribd membership because library doesn’t have it!

Just read the first 2 chapters. Aw, these poor kids!

Me too! This is going to be a heart breaking read.

“You think no one else understands, I want to tell him, but you’re wrong. I do. You’re not alone.��

🥺

Finished the next two chapters. Kit is such a brat!

EDIT: I understand his behavior towards his mom but I think he should be nicer to his siblings ☹️

Eh, he is 13 and caught in a bad situation, and biting the hand that feeds him.
This mom. Kind of a stereotype, the way she is written, but no less awful.

I wish I could say that no school would let kids out to a stranger without verifying they’re on file or hearing directly from the parents about it first, but unfortunately it can happen. So bizarre that apparently this Sandra has been asked to pick up the kids several times before and yet still the school had nothing in their files, so clearly the teacher is a a moron, even before her nasty comments to Lochan and Maya.

Haven't gotten to my two chapters yet - wonder where Chava is!

Chava, let us know if you want us to wait for you :) I don't want to leave you behind since you asked for this buddy read!

I am just now debating whether to read chapters 5 & 6, or go to sleep and save them for tomorrow. I guess I will wait... I am taking tomorrow off work, so I can probably read 5-8 if we do want to stay on the original schedule :)

Also, @Aiswrya �� congrats on becoming a Mod! I didn’t know until now :)

Alysa wrote: "Also, @Aiswrya �� congrats on becoming a Mod! I didn’t know until now :)"

Thanks!! It's very exciting :)

Alysa wrote: "I am just now debating whether to read chapters 5 & 6, or go to sleep and save them for tomorrow. I guess I will wait... I am taking tomorrow off work, so I can probably read 5-8 if we do want to s..."

Yeah, 5-8 sounds good!

Just finished Chapter 8. this is some depressing stuff, Alysa :( It's making my heart break. And honestly, I can't bring myself to sympathize with Kit at all. If I saw my mom wasting her life away with alcohol and drugs, it would steer me well away from that path. I absolutely cannot understand Kit doing the exact same things as his mom, especially when he clearly identifies her shortcomings.

This book was a heartbreaker for sure.

Aiswrya wrote: "Just finished Chapter 8. this is some depressing stuff, Alysa :( It's making my heart break. And honestly, I can't bring myself to sympathize with Kit at all. If I saw my mom wasting her life away ..."

I just finished Ch. 8 too.
I hate the mom so much. Sometimes the way she’s described is sexist, but unfortunately that seems like the author’s way of painting a particular picture. Like, it’s not because she insists on skimpy clothes and whatnot that she’s a bad mother. It’s because her alcoholism, immaturity, and insecurity make her selfish and neglectful that she’s a bad mother.
Re Kit... I disagree. Like, I don’t agree with his poor, adolescent decision-making but I sympathize because I do understand it. And it is pretty common for kids like that to follow their parents shitty paths even when they have seen the outcome, sometimes unconsciously, and sometimes because they think they are superior and it won’t happen to them.

Ch. 9 & 10.
The back and forth perspectives are becoming a little more interesting. Like, not learning Maya’s actual perspective on the dancing scene until after Lochan’s already obsessed over it. I think Lochan puts Maya on a bit of a pedestal but they are both only human of course.

The scene where all 5 of the kids are at the table talking against each other (beans, homework, Kit stirring up trouble, Maya not helping...) was really well done. It was the most palpable show of family-stress yet.

So....
Should we wait for Chava to catch up? I don’t mind at all.
@Chava �� hoping you are okay!

You’re going to hate me, but I don’t have it in me to read this book. It’s just too depressing and I hate carrying that feeling around. Sorry ☹️☹️

Do you want to read a fun book with me instead?

EDIT - I poked around in your shelves a little, and we have a few TBR books in common. Happy to read any of those with you. No pressure for another buddy read though! Feel free to say no 😊

No worries 🙂 I like the book but I get why others don’t.
Maybe we could BR Truly Devious sometime in the fall?

@Chava : please chime in soon if you want me to wait for you before I continue on with Forbidden. Otherwise I guess I will just resume in another day or two.

Alysa wrote: "No worries 🙂 I like the book but I get why others don’t.
Maybe we could BR Truly Devious sometime in the fall?

@Chava : please chime in soon if you want me to wait for you before I..."

Absolutely! It's also my BOM nomination for October :) Hope it's chosen!

Oh, haha! I hadn’t noticed that yet!
I need to go over and make some nominations too...

Hi guys,
Sorry I didn't check in. I've worked 12 hour days and GR had to take a back seat. I am so sorry. I will catch up, just keep reading!

Btw @Chava, I’ve not read past chapter 12, just let me know where you’re at. I will probably read a bunch over the weekend.

So I finished this the other night...
(view spoiler)[I liked it! It was a very sad story, and the back-and-forth 1st person POV was very effective for getting inside Maya and Lochan's heads and understanding how they got to where they ended up.
I come from the privilege of being an only child (and one who has, over the years, read quite a lot of fan fiction featuring incest) so on an abstract level the idea of consensual close-in-age sibling incest does not squick me out as much as it does a lot of other people, so I was actually kind of sorry that this book was so much less a love story and so much more a broader tale of effed-up parenting, neglect, and stress. And therefore had a kind of built-in denial of any chance at HEA. I mean, given how events transpired, with Lochan in jail, I would have personally been fine with him escaping and the couple meeting up again someday, BUT objectively that's just not what this book set out to do.
Rather, it makes you think about the question: These kids were dealt a shitty hand, and were emotionally/psychologically damaged because of it. Lochan & Maya's love would not have developed otherwise. BUT, seeing as it did... it's too late to change now... and is it really all that terrible?

The only really major problem I had with this book was actually with the extreme to which the mother's behavior was taken, i.e., she was more and more and more absent and unreachable not because of any appreciable change in her circumstances but simply because the plot required it (which then rendered her sudden and shocking reappearance, at Kit's request, quite unbelievable); and somehow there were no consequences with Protective Services. Teachers, neighbors, friends' parents, doctors... SOMEONE surely would have noticed enough to at least call in a suspicion, even if only after Lochan's death?!

Similarly, a few other characters could have been a bit more developed instead of just being trotted vaguely out when the plot demanded. Like Francie. Or Declan, whose late-stage presence was never explained at all.

Overall I think I would give this 3.5 stars rounding up to 4.
(hide spoiler)]

ETA: Also I wish the Epilogue had been more robust. Like... I want to know how other people reacted to the news of what happened? Or was the whole thing covered up hush-hush? WHAT.