Main Character: Lochan and Maya Whitely
Love Interest: Maya and Lochan Whitely (highlight to find out)
Series: None
Author: Website|Facebook|Twitter|Goodreads
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.
I saw this book around blog land long before it came out and I was mighty intrigued by it since it was getting such high marks and it was about incest. Normally, I wouldn’t have touched this book because a brother and sister falling in love just isn’t my cup of tea but I’m so glad that I read this book. This story was heartbreaking and it was hard to get through but man was it wonderfully written. Suzuma did a fantastic job of drawing me into Lochan and Maya’s home life and making me feel a part of their story.
This story gives us an inside look into the lives of 18 year old Lochan Whitely. He’s the oldest of five children and his father skipped out on them and their mother is never around. She’d much rather try to capture whatever’s left of her youth (which isn’t much) by going out with her boss who’s already married than stay home and be a mother to her kids. That leaves the two older kids to raise the younger kids. Mainly it’s Lochan and Maya playing Mom and Dad to their younger siblings. Both Lochan and Maya share responsibility for their younger siblings and while they’re rather be kids themselves, they can’t because there’s no one else to care for the kids, Tiffin and Willa. On top of taking care of the two younger siblings, they had to deal with a very pissed off thirteen year old named Kit (their other brother) who was pissed off at the world and took it out on Lochan. So to say that Lochan is a busy young man is putting it mildly because while he’s trying to keep his family together (and functioning), he’s got some serious social issues.
Lochan’s got a lot going on emotionally. He works from sun up to sun down and he worries about things that a normal eighteen year old shouldn’t have to worry about. While I was reading this book, I couldn’t help but want to help Lochan and want to hug him close. His character is deeply troubled and the only person that helps him out is his sister Maya. Maya is two years younger than he is and she tackles the same worries that Lochan has right along with him because they only have each other to lean on. They’re the mother and father figure to their siblings and they don’t act like a normal brother and sister. It should have surprised me that they would develop feelings for each other but it didn’t. When they start feeling for each other, it feels normal. You know that it’s not normal and you know that they shouldn’t want to do things with each other but you’re not repulsed by it all because you understand that their relationship is not a normal one. Their family life isn’t a normal one. They have nobody else to lean on, just the two of them and they always make it work.
My heart went out to Lochan because he was always thinking of someone besides himself. He looked after the kids, he looked after Maya all while dealing with the fact that speaking in public or to anyone outside of his family freaked the ever living heck out of him. Speaking in class, to outside adults brought on panic attacks and made him break out in a sweat that scared him and the only person that could talk him down from these attacks was Maya. He got a lot of grief from Kit and at night after the house was quiet and he finally had time to himself, he would do the stuff he needed to do for school.
The way that Lochan dealt with his feelings for Maya was how I would imagine anyone would deal with falling in love with their sibling. They would be bothered, they would want to hide their feelings and Lochan did a credible job of trying to stay away from Maya. Maya on the other hand knew what was in her heart and it hurt her that the law, society and everyone else wouldn’t understand and let her be with the one person who understood her and needed her most. The one boy she would always love just happened to be her brother.
You knew that this couldn’t end well and the ending broke my heart and it was the ending that made me give this book a B instead of the A that everyone else gave it. I walked around with a broken heart for days after I finished this book because of everything that both Maya and Lochan were put through but mostly because of Lochan. He was such a good kid and he tried to do the right thing but sometimes, you just have to follow your heart and suffer the consequences. More than anyone, Lochan suffered and my heart bled for him and for his siblings.
Reading this story made me so angry at the Whitely’s parents. Putting the job of raising kids on top of Lochan’s shoulders like that was wrong on so many levels because it was their fault that these kids didn’t have a normal life and it was their fault that everything went down the way that it did. I hated how their mother came in at the eleventh hour and tried to save the day without knowing a hot damn thing about anything. I wanted to beat her with a 2×4. I still do.
This book isn’t a beautiful story, it’s heartbreaking and it’s emotional but it’s good. It’ll stay with you long after you’ve put it down and you’ll want more for everyone involved but you won’t be sorry you read this book. Give it a try. Kudos to Tabitha Suzuma on writing a wonderfully epic story about a boy trying to get through life one day at a time.
..and that’s your scoop!
Book cover and blurb credit: http://barnesandnoble.com
