Rating: 5 stars
Genre: Family Drama
Recommended for: Adult readers who are willing to read an incest story between siblings with an open mind
First of all, this is not a young-adult book. Even the back cover of the book mentions that this is not suitable for younger readers.
Well, I'm a wreck today emotionally but also physically. Not only did I stay up until late in the night to finish it, but I couldn't stop thinking about it and going to sleep when I was done. The finale and the events driving to it, are so strong and addictive, that you can't put it down once you reach a certain point in the plot.
I honestly wasn't sure I was going to like this book. The subject after all is a taboo and I certainly have some pretty strong ideas about it. I will not go as far as to say that this book made me reconsider them; I still think incest, even consentual, is not right. But I will say that in this case I understood why those two felt and acted as they did. And what's making this story so poignant, is the feeling that had those two charismatic children grown up in a normal family, these things would not have happened.
I can't say enough things about Lochan. Lochan was a boy that was forced to become a father to his other 4 siblings at the tender age of 13, when his father left the family to the hands of their alcoholic and self-absorbed mother. On top of that, he has a phobia that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to speak with people outside his comfort zone, aka his family. He's in fact known as the 'weirdo Whitely' in school because he never speaks to anyone. Thus a brilliant (he's a straight A student), sensitive, intuitive, generous boy is forced to live isolated from literally everyone else besides his sister Maya, since a. he can't make friends because of his phobia and b. no one must ever learn what's going inside their family or the Social Services will separate them and take them to foster families. His sister Maya is his sole support through this, since the rest of their siblings are either too young or too immature to help.
Maya is mature and responsible herself. She seems to be the only one in the family who understands the sacrifices Lochan is making for the rest of them and seeks to help him emotionally and practically with the everyday chores. Her brother (did I already mention how handsome he is?) has become a hero in her eyes, that other boys in her age just can't measure up to. And it's during a date with one of those boys that she comes to realize how much more than a brother he has come to mean for her.
Maya was also the weak link in this story for me, and the reason I planned to rate it with 4 rather than 5 stars before the ending. For some reason, I could not see that Maya's love for Lochan was more than an infatuation. Although there's no disputing Lochan's love for her, there were a couple of scenes in the book that made me less than sure about the depth of hers.
In the end, the finale and the scenes that lead to it, more than made up for any reservations I had. It was fast, it was emotional, it was powerful, it was heart wrenching, as fit this dramatic story. I might have wished for things to turn out differently -not for them to end together I must say, but find happiness or contentment in some other way- but to be honest it would be out of place with the rest of the book. Because it's obvious from page 1, that this is more than a romance; it's a family drama. We see clearly all the members in this weird household with their unique problems, everyday struggles, how each of them tries to adapt and survive. And in my mind, what Lochan and Maya did was a survival mechanism, an effort to draw more strength from each other. So even if I don't condone what they did, I can understand them and that's finally what saved the book for me.
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