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.

A lot of peo­ple have given this book glow­ing reviews – the gen­eral con­sen­sus being that the romance between brother and sis­ter Lochan and Maya, far from being off-putting, was not only a pas­sion­ate love story, but heart­break­ing as well.

Iron­i­cally, the incest in For­bid­den was the least of my prob­lems with this book — though it will be a deal breaker for many read­ers. I like fic­tion that explores dif­fi­cult and taboo sub­jects, that makes me ques­tion why I feel a cer­tain way about a seri­ous, sen­si­tive issue. If noth­ing else, For­bid­den is a pretty dar­ing YA novel. But I couldn’t help but feel slightly… manip­u­lated as I read this.

For me, For­bid­den wasn’t a love story at all. If Suzuma was attempt­ing to make me, as a reader, fall in love with these char­ac­ters and find myself hop­ing they would find a way to be together, then she failed – and not, as you might assume, because Lochan and Maya were brother and sister.

Far from being roman­tic, this is one big mess of an abu­sive rela­tion­ship, in more ways than one. I was very aware while read­ing that this isn’t a story about two con­sent­ing adults. This is a story about two teenagers. And when the inevitable does hap­pen, and Lochan and Maya sleep together, it’s a story about one (admit­tedly, young) adult hav­ing sex with his under­age sister.

Both lack any sort of healthy rela­tion­ship role model in their lives. They rely on one another to sur­vive, never let­ting any­one else get too close for fear social ser­vices will sep­a­rate their fam­ily. Lochan, in par­tic­u­lar, is com­pletely iso­lated from any other type of rela­tion­ship, expe­ri­enc­ing severe panic attacks if he has to talk to any­one out­side his fam­ily. He is, frankly, men­tally unsta­ble and as the story pro­gresses, it is clear he is loos­ing his grip on real­ity. An exam­ple of this is in the sub­tle shift when refer­ring to his kid brother and sis­ter as ‘the chil­dren’, to ‘my chil­dren’, by the end of the book.

Maya stuck me as incred­i­bly young, despite prac­ti­cally being a mother to her younger broth­ers and sis­ters for years. She dis­plays a typ­i­cal teenager view on love: that what her and Lochan share is true love. They are soul mates. It is epic. They will be together for­ever, and it’s unfair that soci­ety won’t allow them to be happy. That she pushes Lochan to give in to his desires, and her belief that once they are both 18 they will be free to do what­ever they want with­out reper­cus­sions, (and that until then it’s per­fectly fine for them to touch as long as they don’t have full sex) only high­lights her severe naivety and lack of matu­rity, mak­ing it seem all the more wrong when they do finally sleep with one another. For me, this is actu­ally a story about two neglected teenagers who turn to the only per­son they trust, seek­ing any sort of com­fort out of fear and loneliness.

I also dis­liked how moody and vio­lent Lochan was. One moment he would be fine, the next, in a rage. He attacks his younger sib­lings more than once and in a moment of care­less­ness, dis­lo­cates his baby sister’s arm. In one par­tic­u­larly dis­turb­ing scene, Maya returns home from hav­ing din­ner with a boy from school and Lochan has got­ten so worked up, he con­fronts her the moment she steps in the house, scream­ing abuse in her face and punch­ing a wall. Lochan is vio­lent, jeal­ous and pos­ses­sive. Per­haps under­stand­able, given his life so far, but it makes him a very dan­ger­ous roman­tic interest.

The fact that Maya doesn’t see any of this, and is con­stantly run­ning to com­fort Lochan, or make excuses for his behav­iour (to the extend she doesn’t even bother to check on her younger brother after being grabbed round the neck), only high­lights just how young Maya is, and how dark their rela­tion­ship really was. There are some quite graphic sex scenes in For­bid­den, and I was uneasy about how much they focused on Lochan’s grat­i­fi­ca­tion and how roman­ti­cized they were. Maya is happy to give Lochan this gift, this inner peace and com­fort. Never is it more clear that this isn’t an equal relationship.

The most inter­est­ing char­ac­ter for me was Kit and I per­son­ally found his com­pli­cated rela­tion­ship with Lochan far more com­pelling. I’ve read some reviews where read­ers have found him obnox­ious and spoilt, but I think it’s easy to for­get he is only thir­teen and if my heart broke for any­one in this story, it was him.

Over­all, I found For­bid­den far too melo­dra­matic and angsty, despite it’s poten­tial to explore a par­tic­u­larly dark, obses­sive rela­tion­ship. So much more could have been done with the story. A deeper look at all the char­ac­ters, instead of just focus­ing on Lochan and Maya would have been good. I’ll admit that these kids drove me nuts with their erratic behav­iour – one minute they were are des­per­ately in love, the next they hate one another, are filled with dis­gust at their own feel­ings, and then are back to being in love, all within a page or two. Rinse and repeat.

The shift in their rela­tion­ship was sud­den — a lot more was needed to con­vince me of their roman­tic inter­est in one another. Ulti­mately, I just couldn’t con­nect with any­one, except, per­haps, Kit. Lochan was vio­lent and manip­u­la­tive and Maya lacked per­son­al­ity. The mother was, sadly, one-dimensional and her char­ac­ter never prop­erly explored.

My biggest gripe would be with the end­ing. It felt out-of-place and made no sense for the char­ac­ters to act the way that they do. If I’m hon­est it felt rushed, ill-thought out, but mostly con­trived, for a tear­ful con­clu­sion. An uncom­fort­able book.