Book Junkie

I love books.

Whether I'm writing them (which I seem to be doing all the time lately - pretty sure I'm going to start calling people in my life by my character's names...), or reading them, I just can't get enough of them. Sooo... as much as I enjoy updating you on my own novels and eagerly nudging you towards purchasing them :-D, I also thought I could share my book recommendations with you on more a regular basis. I shall try, and ain't gonna lie may fail, to blog about my favourite book of the week since I tend to get through a couple of books a week. It's impressive considering I'm almost entirely consumed by own writing - but then as I say... I'm a book junkie.
AND if you feel like it or have time please feel free to leave comments either about the book on recommendation or your own book recommendation for the week.

My Book Recommendation

This week my book recommendation is Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma. I'd never read anything of Suzuma's before so I bought this one because of it's high average rating and beautiful reviews. It really seemed to have touched the people who had read it and considering its blurb I was surprised. Not nearly as surprised as I was by the book, as I was really apprehensive about reading it to be honest - again because of the subject matter and also because I had heard it was really, really sad!
Despite all that, I'm glad I picked it up because Forbidden is now definitely on my favourites shelf.

Book Description

Sixteen-year-old Maya and seventeen-year-old Lochan have never had the chance to be 'normal' teenagers. Having pulled together for years to take care of their younger siblings while their wayward, drunken mother leaves them to fend alone, they have become much more than brother and sister. And now, they have fallen in love. But this is a love that can never be allowed, a love that will have devastating consequences ...
How can something so wrong feel so right?

My Review - Stars - ***** - Awesome Read.

This is a beautifully written story that brings an amazing sensitivity and understanding to a controversial and taboo subject. Through Lochan and Maya, Suzuma somehow manages to breach our societal defences that tells us these two teenagers' love for one another is wrong with answers as to why this has happened - they've had to raise their younger siblings from a young age and provide the parental support, have always turned to each other as equals, as partners, in the same way a mother and father would. Suzuma carefully crafts Lochan and Maya's relationships with their other siblings to illuminate the difference in the way they see each other and interact with one another. For Maya, her brother Kit is her brother Kit and as such she sees him in that respect and loves him in a motherly/sisterly protective, concerned way. Maya's brother Lochan, however, is not her brother but her best friend, her soul mate and she loves him - in her own words - in every way that is possible.
This book, for me is reminiscent of Flowers in the Attic by the late Virgina Andrews - where children are forced to grow up too quickly and absorb responsibility too quickly, and how with the pressure and need for someone to love them as much as they have loved others, can outweigh what society judges as 'right' and 'wrong'. Unlike Flowers in the Attic, however, there is none of that gothic surrealism with Forbidden to detract from its raw authenticity. Suzuma lets us as the readers into the hearts of the people condemned, and even better creates two characters of such realism and painful humanity that we can't possibly judge them; we can only hurt for them under truly tragic and heartbreaking circumstances.

A poignant masterpiece. I would give Forbidden ten stars if I could.

Five massive, massive stars!