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BOOK REVIEW DISCLOSURE
Summary:
Siblings Lochan (17) and Maya (16) have always felt more like friends than brother and sister. With their alcoholic, practically non-existent mother, and a father who long ago abandoned the family, Lochan and Maya have taken over the role of parents to their three younger siblings. Along with the stress of becoming stand-in parents, high school, and the constant threat of child protective services, their lives have brought them close. So close, in fact, that Lochan and Maya have fallen in love. Although they know the relationship is wrong, they are unable to stop how they feel.
Review:
First, allow me to say that if you do not have an open mind, do not read this book. Seriously. Some of the reviews I have read are downright ignorant, and some are even quite disgusted by it. Which means, the point of the book is either 1) Received or 2) Not Received. Confused? Well, read this amazingly heartbreaking story and you will see what I mean.
Yes, there is incest. Yes, a few times throughout I stopped and thought, "Oh my." But this is a love story. A tragic, tragic love story that does not have a happy ending. Actually, when I first read this book, I hated it because I was so bitter about the ending.
However, my mind is changed. I read Forbidden a little over two weeks ago and I cannot get this story out of my head. It is one of those books, as I said in a previous post, where you find yourself wanting something to work out that maybe should not work out . . . and then you find yourself asking, "Well, why shouldn't it work out? Who am I to judge love? To judge anyone, for that matter?"
Forbidden will have you questioning things that have no answer. And however frustrating, that's all right with me.
re: book review request by award-winning author
ReplyDeleteDear Maria,
I'm an award-winning author with a new YA book out last month. Ugly To Start With is a series of thirteen interrelated stories about childhood published by West Virginia University Press.
Can I interest you in reviewing it?
If you write me back at johnmcummings@aol.com, I can email you a PDF of my book. If you require a bound copy, please ask, and I will forward your reply to my publisher. Or you can write directly to Abby Freeland at:
Abby.Freeland@mail.wvu.edu
My publisher, I should add, can also offer your readers a free excerpt of my book through a link from your blog to my publisher's website:
http://wvupressonline.com/cummings_ugly_to_start_with_9781935978084
Here’s what Jacob Appel, celebrated author of
Dyads and The Vermin Episode, says about my new collection: "In Ugly to Start With, set in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, Cummings tackles the challenges of boyhood adventure and family conflict in a taut, crystalline style that captures the triumphs and tribulations of small-town life. He has a gift for transcending the particular experiences to his characters to capture the universal truths of human affection and suffering--emotional truths that the members of his audience will recognize from their own experiences of childhood and adolescence.”
My short stories have appeared in more than seventy-five literary journals, including North American Review, The Kenyon Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and The Chattahoochee Review. Twice I have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize. My short story "The Scratchboard Project" received an honorable mention in The Best American Short Stories 2007.
I am also the author of the nationally acclaimed coming-of-age novel The Night I Freed John Brown (Philomel Books, Penguin Group, 2009), winner of The Paterson Prize for Books for Young Readers (Grades 7-12) and one of ten books recommended by USA TODAY.
For more information about me, please visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Michael_Cummings
Thank you very much, and I look forward to hearing back from you.
Kindly,
John Michael Cummings