Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma

A sad story about more than just brotherly/sisterly love

The novel is about a brother and sister, Lochan,17, and Maya, 16, who are left in charge of their three siblings, Walla, 5; Tiffin, 9; and Kit, 13, since their mother is a waitress, an alcoholic, and is currently dating the owner of the bar in which she works. Now, she is coming home less frequently. And so, Lochan and Maya must make sure to get their siblings to school on time, pick them up from school, make sure they do their homework, and be entertained until their bedtime. The two of them must also cook, clean the house, do groceries, and beg their mother for some money etc. Thus, Lochan and Maya were acting almost like the parents of their siblings.

Lochan has trouble speaking with others outside of his family. His words don’t come out and when he tries to speak, the words escape him. Thus at school, he is a loner, and home is where he can be himself.

(Spoilers ahead!)

Eventually the Lochan and Maya notice how attractive the other one has become. And eventually they realise how much they depend on each other, even need each other, and how attracted they are to one another.

Incest, however, is against the law and so it’s against what society considers right. Will Lochan and Maya’s relationship be found out while living in a house with their three other siblings and having their mother drop by every once in a while?


Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma is written from the prospective of a brother and sister, Lochan and Maya Whitely, so we know what’s going on in both of their minds. Their world is well described that I felt like I was a part of it. One of the characters in particular named Kit, 13, was so realistic, with his want to bother others for no reason at all, and try to oppose authority that it seemed like Tiffin, 9, the younger brother, wasn’t as real as him. The story revolves around the two protagonists, Lochan and Maya, their sister Walla, and their brothers Kit and Tiffin.

The novel wasn’t bad, however the last one hundred pages seemed to be dragging on a bit. I felt like I was emotionally connected to the story, because I didn’t want the protagonists to get caught. But at the same time, I felt like the ending wasn’t bad at all. In this novel, the protagonists do get caught, and we see the result of that. Which I found was different than what might have happened in other novels.

Rating: 3.5/5

Genre: older teens

Pages: 418

ISBN - 10: 9781862308169

QUOTES (contain spoilers!):

Lochan’s thoughts: “At what point does a fly give up trying to escape through a closed window – do its survival instincts keep it going until it is physically capable of no more, or does it eventually learn after one crash too many that there is no way out? At what point do you decide that enough is enough?” (1)

Lochan’s description of himself: “My eyes slide past theirs as I enter the classrooms and they gaze past me, through me. I am here but not here. The teachers tick me off in the register but no one sees me, for I have long perfected the art of being invisible.” (2-3)

Lochan’s thoughts: “Family: the most important thing of all. My siblings may drive me crazy at times but they are my blood. They’re all I’ve known. My family is me. They are my life. Without them I walk the planet alone. The rest are all outsiders, strangers. They never metamorphose into friends. And even if they did, even if I found, by some miracle, a way of connecting to someone outside my family – how could they possibly compare to those who speak my language and know who I am without having to be told.” (35-6)

Lochan’s thoughts about his sister, Maya: “Over the last year she has turned from pretty to beautiful in an unusual, delicate, unnerving way. Boys chat her up endlessly – alarmingly.” (37)

Lochan: “I cannot distinguish one sentence from another: it has all turned into a blanket of noise.” (67)

Maya: “The sound of silence fills the air like a beautiful smell: no raised voices, no slamming doors, no pounding feet, no deafening music or babbling cartoons.” (108)

Maya’s thoughts: “I can’t bear to think I might have lost our closeness, our friendship, our trust. He was always so much more than just a brother. He is my soul mate, my fresh air, the reason I look forward to getting up each morning. I always knew I loved him more than anyone else in the world – and not just in a brotherly way, the way I feel about Kit and Tiffin. Yet somehow it never crossed my mind there could be a whole step beyond…” (132)

Lochan: “And the hands of the kitchen clock will continue moving forwards, reaching midnight before starting all over again, as though the day that just ended never began.” (148)

Lochan: “…the fear that we will have no choice but to bury this night as if it never took place, a shameful secret to be filed away for the rest of our lives until, brittle with age, it crumbles to dust – a faint, distant memory, like the powder of a moth’s wings on a windowpane, the spectre of something that perhaps never occurred, existing solely in our imagination.” (176)

Lochan: “The sky is on fire and the night has ended.” (180)

Maya: “Everything greys in comparison. The world becomes bland and vacuous, there seems little point to anything any more.” (182)

Maya: “The pedestrians around me don’t feel quite alive. I don’t feel alive. I’m not sure who I am any more. The girl who existed before that night, before the kiss, has been erased from life. I am no longer who I was; I still don’t know who I will become.” (189)

Maya: “Pupils hurrying this way and that look like extras on a film set. I must move in order to fit into all this activity, just as an electron must obey the current.” (189-90)

Maya: “If I keep going, maybe I will find my way back – back to the person I used to be. I am moving more slowly now. Maybe even floating. I swim through space. The earth has lost its gravity, everything feels liquid around me.” (191)

Maya speaking to Lochan: “I don’t care if you happen biologically to be my brother. You’ve never just felt like a brother to me. You’ve always been my best friend, my soul mate, now I’ve fallen in love with you too. Why is that such a crime?” (200-1)

Lochan: “The human body needs a constant flow of nourishment, air and love to survive. Without Maya I lose all three; apart we will slowly die.” (200-1)

Lochan: “Everyone else is permitted to have what they want, express their love as they please, without fear of harassment, ostracism, persecution or even the law. Even emotionally abusive, adulterous relationships are often tolerated, despite the harm they cause others. In our progressive, permissive society, all these harmful, unhealthy types of ‘love’ are allowed – but not ours.” (341)

Lochan: “We are being punished by the world for one simple reason: for having been produced by the same woman.” (341)

Lochan: “Sometimes, worse than watching her at school from a distance is seeing her at home, too close to touch, together but apart, so near and yet so far.” (341)

Maya thinking about Lochan: “His hands are like vices round my wrists, still trying to prevent me from touching him.” (354)

Lochan: “…I am overcome by a feeling of complete detachment. I am a mere object to these people. I am barely human any more.” (384)

Maya: “…I’ve learned that for me, as with everything I do now, there is no point to it. Nothing can relieve the pain. Not crying, laughing, screaming, begging. Nothing can change the past. Nothing can bring him back. The dead remain dead.” (409-10)

A Season of Eden by J.M. Warwick

An tale of a student falling for her teacher

A beautiful eighteen-year-old girl named Eden thought she could have everything, that she even set her eyes on her new music teacher who is four years older than her. After seeing him, James Christian, Eden can think of nothing but him. She no longer wishes to be with her current boyfriend, Matt, since she feels that any excitement their relationship had died long ago, and that she and Matt were only together so that they would have someone to date.

Not only that, Eden starts to feel too immature compared to her twenty-two-year-old teacher. She starts listening to classical music, which James refers to as food, while all other types of music are referred to as junk food. She starts to find her pastimes, such as partying, childish compared to what she imagines James would do during his pastimes. Eden starts coming to school early to get a chance to talk to him alone before class begins, and to help pass out any papers, and even to give him hints about her thoughts of him.

Will Matt let go of Eden so easily? How will Eden get her teacher to like her enough to forget that they’re not allowed to date? Will James succumb and fall for his beautiful student? If so, will Eden and James get caught?


Every here and there, there are word omissions, indicating the need for more editing. And at times, the sentences were too short. But those errors are easy to avoid because of the gripping story. At first I thought the progression that Eden experienced of leaving her boyfriend and of no longer partying happened too quickly. But then I thought about it and remembered that she just used to party because she didn’t really have a family to go home to ever since her mother died and her father remarried. Thus, perhaps Eden was looking to move on for a long time and her new teacher gave her enough motivation to do so.

I wish the ending had been more precise of what to imagine would happen, but even without that, it was a great story about a girl neglected from parental love for about ten years.

Overall, if the book had been edited a few more times it could have been much better to read. But regardless of that, it was a great story and it left me thinking about the characters after I had completed the novel.

Rating: 4/5

Genre: teens

Pages: 234

ISBN - 10: 1933963905

QUOTES (may contain spoilers)

Eden describing James: “His skin wasn’t the honey tan of most southern California boys I knew, but rather a pale luminescence, like a candle just starting to glow.” (2)

“At first only the piano, light trickling notes that danced on the fringe of heaven. Then the voice. The sound stopped me.” (11)

“My heart started to thump as his fingers swept the keys, taking my pulse and blending it with the melody.” (11)

Eden: “Matt and I had really only been two people playing at liking each other because being alone was the lame alternative. We’d both be news tomorrow. I’d be barraged by leftover guys.” (20)

Eden describes James playing the piano: “His fingers taunted the ivory keys.” (33)

“Boys could be disgusted by honesty. But then I realized he wasn’t a boy. He was a man. Were men disgusted by honesty?” (40-1)

“Verbalizing meant admitting that we were all about the show, some intricate spectacle that might run down, like a clock inevitably unwinding. Then everything would stand still. Others could examine us.” (42)

“For a second I saw myself inside one of those confession boxes. I wondered what it would be like, to share my sins with a hidden stranger. I wondered if James Christian had anything to confess.” (44)

A Season of Eden by JM Warwick (trailer)

I haven't read this book yet, 'A Season of Eden' by J.M. WarWick. Here's the description that amazon.com gave:

"He's my teacher. I shouldn't be alone with him. But I can't help that he's irresistible. I let the door silently close at my back. He stared at me, and a taut quiet stretched between us. "I like hearing you play," I said, moving toward him. He turned, in sync with my slow approach. He looked up at me but didn't say anything. I rested my clammy hand on the cold, slick body of the baby grand. "May I?" The muscles in his throat shifted, then he swallowed. "Eden." My knees weakened, like a soft tickling kiss had just been blown against the backs of them. "Is it okay?" I asked. His gaze held mine like two hands joined. He understood what I was really asking. "Let me stay," I said. "Please." "You're going to get me in trouble," he said."

Soulmate by L.J. Smith

Night World 6: Soulmate by L.J. Smith

Okay...Another forbidden love

Soulmate was an okay story. The beginning was extremely interesting, but after a chapter or two, it somehow went downhill. I did like that the protagonist, Hannah, has had many past lives, but she fails to remember them. What I didn’t like was that sometimes while I was reading the story, I felt like I was inside a box. Although the story was a little different from the previous stories in the Night World series, all the stories are about forbidden love and so in the end cannot be very different. I also didn’t like the decision that Hannah made in the end.


The story starts with Hannah Snow, a girl with a large birthmark on her face, in the psychologist’s office, telling him that she has finding notes in her room in her own handwriting but she has no recollection of writing them. She writes notes such as: “Dead before seventeen.” (435)

Then the bell rings and Paul the psychologist goes to open the door even after Hannah instinctually warns him not to, and at the same time a wolf breaks in through the window and tries to attack Hannah.

Only with the help of her psychologist will she be able to find out why she keeps writing notes to herself about death. How many past lives has she had? And why does Hannah keep dying before the age of seventeen in each one of them? How did the birthmark on her face come to be?

Rating: 3/5

Genre: fantasy, teens

Pages: 229 (from page 434 to 662)

ISBN - 10: 1416974512

QUOTES (CONTAIN SPOILERS!)

Hannah’s thoughts: “She didn’t know why she felt this way—but it hurt her terribly. It was as if she were losing something . . . infinitely precious . . . before she’d had a chance to know it.” (496)

About Thierry: “He wanted her. He loved her . . . adored her. He thought of her the way poets think of the moon and the stars—in ridiculous hyperbole. He actually saw her surrounded by a sort of silvery halo.” (513)

Hannah’s thoughts: “I don’t know why people are afraid of vampires, she thought. A human could tease or torture a vampire this way, driving him insane—if she were cruel.” (516)

About Hannah: “The house was too bright. The clock on the kitchen wall was too loud. She had the distracted feeling that it wasn’t either night or daytime. It was like coming out of a theatre and being surprised to find that it’s still light outside. She felt that this couldn’t be the same house she’d left an hour ago. She wasn’t the same person who had left. Everything around her seemed like some carefully staged movie set that was supposed to be real, but wasn’t, and only she could tell the difference.” (521)

Hannah’s thoughts about Thierry: “His dark eyes seemed pensive again, the sort of expression a star might have if it cared about anything that was going on underneath it. Infinitely remote, but infinitely sad, too.” (576)


Also see my reviews for the previous five books in the Night World series: Secret Vampire, Daughters of Darkness, Spellbinder, Dark Angel, and The Chosen.

The Chosen by L.J. Smith

Night World 5: The Chosen by L.J. Smith

Rashel the vampire hunter

The Chosen did not excite me. Perhaps it was because it revolved around a vampire hunter and it was not the type of book I was looking for. After telling us the background information of the protagonist, the story seemed to start later on. I kept zoning out when I was being told of Rashel’s vampire hunting adventures. I thought it was interesting that there was a secret club that teens went to who were really into death and darkness, and I also liked Quinn the vampire.


On Rashel’s fifth birthday party, inside a tube structure, she saw a man with red hair who seemed to be devouring her friend, Timmy. She managed to call for help, but when her mother came, the vampire broke the mother’s neck. Rashel then got sent to her only relative’s house to live, but that same vampire set the house on fire, and Rashel’s relative died.

After that, Rashel started moving around a lot, going from one foster family to the next. But what she knew most was that she must learn to protect herself from vampires, and that she wanted that very vampire, the one that killed her mother and Timmy, dead.

In the future, Rashel becomes a vampire hunter, and has a few vampire hunter friends. They are observing a warehouse area because they suspect something is going on there. Rashel has knocked down a vampire named Quinn and they have taken him to a room. She tells her fellow vampire hunters that she will look after the vampire until go run an errand. Secretly she is thinking about staking him and not letting the others see this happen.

May contain spoilers ahead:

But she can’t stake a vampire that hasn’t done anything to her, especially one that’s knocked out. Nothing goes according to plan. Once she starts speaking to John Quinn the vampire, she starts to see him as a person, not as a rogue vampires that she often kills, and she doesn’t want to kill him.

When Quinn escapes from his wooden handcuffs, Rashel fights him with her hands because she doesn’t want to use her blade. And once their hands brush together, she feels a shock going through her and everything changes. Quinn starts to take the scarf off her face to see how she looks, just when her fellow vampire hunters walk in.

Rashel doesn’t want Quinn to get hurt and tells him to leave, and eventually he does. But with this, she has lost all respect from her fellow vampire hunters who start to think that she is in fact a vampire lover.

Now, Rashel is all on her own to discover what’s going on in the warehouses and to win back the respect she has lost from her fellow vampire hunters. They no longer believe her when she finds out that something big is actually going on in those warehouses.

Rating: 3/5

Genre: fantasy, teens

Pages: 213 (from page 215 to 427)

ISBN - 10: 1416974512

QUOTES (MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS!)

Definition of ‘rogue’: “a depraved monster who killed human kids foolishly close to human habitations.” (233)

Rashel: “The night has a thousand eyes.” (234)
Elliot: ““And the day only one,” came the reply from the intercom.” (234)

Poem written by Daphne: “There’s warmth in ice; there’s cooling peace in fire, / And midnight light to show us all the way. / The dancing flame becomes a funeral pyre; / The Dark was more enticing than the Day.” (307)

Quinn’s thoughts: “He let the cold air soak into him, permeating his body, mixing with the cold he felt inside. He imagined himself freezing solid—a rather pleasant thought.” (342)

Quinn to Rashel: “Besides, now that I have seen your face, I can’t stand the sight of myself in your eyes. I know what you think of me." (379)

Quinn to Rashel when she’s unable to hit him: “I told you before. You’re an idiot.” (379)

Quinn to Rashel, speaking in her mind: “It’s the idea that everyone has one and just one soulmate in the world, and that if you find them, you recognize them immediately.” (399)

Rashel’s description: “It was as if a dragon had breathed suddenly into the room, sending a roaring gale of fire through it.” (415)


Also see my reviews for the previous four books in the Night World series: Secret Vampire, Daughters of Darkness, Spellbinder, and Dark Angel.

Dark Angel by L.J. Smith

Night World 4: Dark Angel by L.J. Smith

Somewhat different from the previous three Night World stories

Dark Angel was somewhat different than the previous three stories in the series since it doesn’t just introduce two characters and say that they’re soul mates. Throughout a great part of the story I wondered who exactly a character named ‘Angel’ was. The previous stories never had such a character who would speak inside the mind of the protagonist.


One day, while walking home from school, Gillian hears a child crying near the creek. She has to help and thinks that the child might be drowning, so she looks into the creek only to lose her balance and falls in.

Somehow she manages to make it out of the creek, but it’s wintertime and she’s freezing. Her body eventually stops creating heat and she has no strength to move. She sees a tunnel with light at the end of it. Then she hears a beautiful boy who asks her if she wants to live. But she doesn’t know what to live for since her mother is an alcoholic, her parents are unhappy together, and she is unpopular in school. But somehow the beautiful boy makes her see that there are things to live for and so Gillian chooses to live.

She is told by the beautiful boy’s voice to go in front of the car that is passing by. It’s David’s car, the boy that she has had a crush on for a long time. He helps get her home.

She starts to hear the voice of the beautiful boy inside her head. He tells her what she must do in order to become popular. And he tells her to trust him and to call him ‘Angel’ because he’s her guardian angel.

But who really is Angel? And how difficult will it be for Gillian to become popular and get David, the boy she likes?

Rating: 3.5/5

Genre: fantasy, teens

Pages: 205 (from page 5 to 209)

ISBN - 10: 1416974512

Quotes (CONTAIN SPOILERS!):

David: "And I never saw you at school?" he muttered. "I must've been blind." (67)

Angel: "Have you ever had the feeling that you don't really know reality?" (144)

Gillian: "This is about being a witch, isn't it? You're saying that I've always felt that way because it's true. Because for me there is a different reality. . . ."
"Nah." Angel grimaced. "Actually everybody feels exactly the same. Doesn't mean a thing." (145)

“‘An earthbound spirit is a damaged soul. . . .’” (182)

Melusine: “Spirits in the between-place can watch us, sometimes talk to us, but they can't really interact with us.” (182)

Angel: “What's life?” He bared his teeth. “‘Out, out, brief candle’—or something like that.” (192)


Also see my reviews for the previous three books in the Night World series: Secret Vampire, Daughters of Darkness, and Spellbinder.

The problems with using -ing

As I edit my work, I notice that I use a lot of sentences that start with –ing, or that use –ing somewhere in the middle. But that’s where the problem comes from. The use of –ing signifies that two things are happening simultaneously.

Using –ing and ‘as’ too often, actually weakens the writing, and using –ing at the beginning of the sentence makes it looks amateurish, which is what it says in Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Brown and Dave King.

There is an example of this too:

“Disappearing into my tent, I changed into fresh jeans.” The –ing construction forced simultaneity on two actions that can’t be simultaneous. The doctor didn’t duck into the tent and pull on clean pants at the same time—she was a biologist, not a contortionist. (194)

Another example is when ‘–ing’ and ‘as’ are used in proper sentences:

“Pulling off her gloves, she turned to face him.” (193)

and

“As she pulled off her gloves, she turned to face him.” (193)

However, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers says that this makes the action seem incidental and unimportant.

There are some alternatives to change this sentence around:

“She pulled off her gloves and turned to face him,” or even “She pulled off her gloves, turned to face him.” (194)

The book also gives advice. It says to look for alternatives if you see more than one or two uses of ‘as’ or ‘-ing’ on a page. And to place the verb that uses ‘-ing’ in the middle of the sentence to make it appear less noticeable.

Have you ever noticed the use of –ing in your writing?

The Beginnings of Stories

Why is it that writers think they can tempt you enough by showing you a glimpse of the present condition of the characters, then take you back into their pasts to show you how the characters came to be that way? It might interest some, but that method certainly doesn’t interest me.

Today was my third encounter that I can recall with a story that started off in the present then went back into the past and stayed in the past for a very long time. It was too bothersome for me to even continue watching the film, “Love in the Time of Cholera,” that I fast-forwarded it just to see if the story returned to the present and continued the story a little further from there. It did. I should also mention that I knew before I had started watching it that the film did not receive very good reviews.

Two novels I read some time ago also used the same strategy: Conceit by Mary Novik and Camille by Alexandre Dumas Fils (this is not Alexandre Dumas, it is his son). Neither of the two left a great impression in my memory, although Conceit had beautiful prose, Camille was one of the most boring stories I’d ever read.

In Camille, the narrator discovers that the prostitute he loved has died, and then he goes on to tell us about his affair. Why would I care about the affair if I already knew the outcome of it? I didn’t want to know the ending just as I began reading – it made it even more difficult for me to get through the story.

Have you ever felt frustrated by how a story began? Has any strategy ever bothered you so much as this one did me?

Spellbinder by L.J. Smith

Night World 3: Spellbinder by L.J. Smith

Rating: 4.5/5
Genre: fantasy, teens
Pages: 239 (from page 491 to 729)
ISBN - 10: 1416974504

So far, the most exciting book in the series

Spellbinder by L.J. Smith is the third book in the Night World series. I found it to be the most exciting so far. L.J. Smith has a way to catch you with the first sentence or in this case the first world, “Expelled.” There was tension in the story, and I didn’t know how one of the characters, Blaire, would react. Consequently, I couldn’t do anything else before I finished this book. It can be read within five hours or less for faster readers.

I’m getting used to L.J. Smith’s quick endings that leave you curious about what will happen next. I’m hoping to see these characters in future books and see what has happened. If you haven't noticed already, the last sentence in each of the stories has the word 'night' in it.


Two cousins, Thea and Blaise Harman, are witches, but not pure witches, they have a bit of vampire blood in them and are related to James and Ash, vampires from the previous two books. Thea and Blaise have been sent from one relative to the next because they keep getting expelled from school. Now they are living with their Grandma Harman in Las Vegas, but they are running out of relatives, and so Thea does not want to get expelled from this school. Usually the expulsions occurred because of Blaise; she has a way of wanting boys to chase her, and she puts magic on them to make them do crazy things to amuse her.

The first day of school, Thea sees a group of students around a rattle snake, trying to poke it, some even shouting to kill it. She is afraid for the snake, and then she sees it getting ready to strike. She tries to calm it, to merge their minds together, and just when she's getting it to calm down, a boy named Eric Ross sends her flying to the side.

Eric gets bitten by the snake, and she knows it, but he still remains calm and tells all the surrounding students that the snake didn't bite. Thea takes her cousin Blaise's necklace, and she and Eric carry the snake into the bushes. There, she looks at Eric's leg and heals it with the stone on the necklace, then pretends that he was just imagining it when he felt so sickly. She feels some sort of odd connection with him. Why was he willing to risk his life for the snake? When Eric shows his interest for, she tells him that she doesn't want to see him again.

Thea really does like Eric, but he isn't a Night person, and she is forbidden by law to fall in love with him. But what is she to do if her cousin Blaise starts to show interest in Eric? Blaise–the same cousin that has turned boys crazy for her with the use of magic. And what if Thea's spell goes wrong and she releases a terrible spirit into the world?


Also see my reviews for the two previous books in the Night World series: Secret Vampire and Daughters of Darkness.