Publisher: Simon Pulse
Publication Date: May 7th, 2010
Pages: 454
Song I Played While Reading: Sound of Your Heart by Shawn Hook
Rating: 2 stars
Lochan and Maya have always felt more like friends than siblings. Together, they have stepped in for their unreliable, alcoholic mother to take care of their three younger siblings. The stress of there lives- and the way they understand each other so completely- has brought them closer than two siblings would ordinarily be.
So close that they have fallen in love.
Lochan and Maya know their relationship is wrong and cannot possible continue. And yet they are powerless to stop what feels so incredibly right...
Let me just get this out of the way for anyone that has not read this yet; this book is sad. Actually, no, that's not even the right word for it. This book will physically hurt your soul. Even if you had mixed feelings on it, like I did, you still come away with this heavy burden. No only does that burden encompass this impossible relationship, but Lochan struggles with severe social anxiety. And honestly, I've never read from a more hopeless and pathetic character. And I use pathetic in a good way, not in a demeaning way. You just feel so bad for this guy. Not only does he struggle with this crippling issue that seems to be taking over his life, but he wants to canoodle with this sister. This spells a disaster.
Right away, I noticed the phenomenal writing. Suzuma has a knack for it; it's clear and articulate, resulting in a weirdly satisfying expression of emotions. You can't help but relate in some way because it's just so right. Does that make sense? It's difficult to explain but I'm hoping some of you will understand. It's like she took an emotional thought from your head and put it into this book. She describes things only you feel like you've ever felt before, as if she's saying, "I hear you. I understand. Let me put those confusing feelings into words."
Now, as some of you may know, I hate angst. The perfect example for me would be the angst in Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire. That yo-yo type of relationship, where you're either connected at the hip or having a screaming match with each other, is just so exhausting to me. So I was a little surprised at how Lochan and Maya handled their relationship. I expected them to be pretty mature about it, since they've had so many responsibilities with their family. They're basically the parents of the house. But these two never talked openly about their feeling; instead they bottled them up until they exploded into multiple screaming matches.
And not only was the angst annoying, but it was repeated. The same inner dialogue, the same array of feelings, and the same fights that happened like clockwork. It felt like I was wrapping myself in blanket that was slowly suffocating me. When you have such a heavy book like this, you need to have some happier moments to balance it out. We got a few of those, but they weren't enough. They were spaced too far apart, so you'd forget it would even happen.
At times, I thought Maya acted like a little twit. She would say these awful things to Lochan and blame him for something he said, and this poor fucking guy would literally almost have a panic attack. You can't treat someone with severe social anxiety like that. I know it's all in the heat of the moment, but she should have known what her words could do to him. It made his anxiety worse and he was second guessing everything he said. I hate to judge these two like this since I don't know what its like to be in this situation (nor do I ever), but it was such a huge portion of my dislike for this story that I had to include it into my review.
Once I got to page 300, I stared skimming. I think the face that they were siblings was starting to really sink in. I have no idea why cause I was fine up until then. But that, coupled with the drowning sadness, was the final push for me to stop reading and to just skim. And the ending was absolutely horrifying. Like, dear God I can't tell who I feel more bad for; the characters or the author that somehow concocted this in her brain. It almost was a little disturbing. It's like Suzuma was thinking, "No, that wasn't bad enough. I need to make it so I rip out the hearts of every person that reads my story." And rip she did.
This was a difficult review for me, which is evident in how messy it is. I apologize, but seriously this book scrambled my brains. I can't even imagine what I would be like if I had actually enjoyed the book. I am super sad that I didn't enjoy it though, because everyone raves about this story! This review makes me sound like a total baby but seriously I love books that crush your soul. But something about this specific story was just too much for me.
Quotes
"I recognize my cue. I want to say something to him, something along the lines of It's all an act. Everyone else is pretending anyway. Kit may have surrounded himself with a group of kids who spit in the face of authority, but they're just as scared as everyone else. They make fun of others and pick on loners just so they can belong. And I'm not much better. I might appear confident and chatty, but I spend most of my time laughing at jokes I don't find funny, saying things I don't really mean- because at the end of the day that's what we're all trying to do: fit in, one way or another, desperately trying to pretend we're all the same."
"I want to tell her that I can't pull her down. I want to tell her that she has to let go of my hand in order to swim. I want to tell her that she must live her own life. But I sense she already knows that these options are open to her. And that she, too, has made her choice."
"At the end of the day it's about how much you can bear, how much you can endure. Being together, we harm nobody; being apart, we extinguish ourselves."
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