Saddest book you’ve ever read?

For me, it’s Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma. As the titles implies, it’s about a forbidden relationship between two siblings. Now before you bash me for openly crying about a book with literal INCEST in it, let me explain my reasoning without spoiling it.

I first read this book when I was 18, feeling emotionally trapped as I myself felt I was having forbidden feelings for a friend of mine, who was in a long distance relationship. He knew about my feelings quite easily as I turned a scarlet red when I was around him sometimes. He didn’t mind as he knew I wouldn’t do anything dumb and thought it was cute. I would write poems to cope but I felt like I needed something different.

I looked up books with forbidden romances and Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma popped up. I was allured by it’s cherry red cover with a chained heart surrounding the title. I looked up the synopsis and as curious by the content. Even before this I was fascinated by taboo relationships in shows and movies as I questioned:

“What lead to this decision?” “Why do the characters crave what/who they can’t have?” “What in their life caused them to think this ok in the first place?”

And considering this was the first book I’ve seen containing the topic of incest in general, I was intrigued. (This was before I discovered VC Andrews.) Mind you, I’d never support this in real life, as it is gross, it’s still interesting to be in a characters mind when they are questioning their morality, especially in a fiction novel.

I decided to order a hardcover of the book off eBay and slowly read it for a few weeks. What I didn’t expect was to fall in love as well as sympathize with the two main characters like I did. The way the story was told and the events leading up to the relationship oddly made sense. I could feel the characters pain and dependence on one another. They knew their feelings were wrong but they also acknowledged how they would be broken without each other at the same time. And what happened at the end of the novel caused me to cry like a rainforest, which was rare for me. To this day it’s still the only book to make me cry at all. I even considered it my favorite book for awhile.

And if you’re wondering about the guy I had feelings for, he and I are still close friends. Fine by me.