This is a review I've put off writing for over 3 years now. 
 It's always hard finding the words for a book I loved so much. I feel like everything that can be said about this book already has been said, and far more eloquently. As verbose I can be sometimes, it's so difficult to find the words to write in favor of a book I truly love. 
 To put it simply, I will just reiterate what so many other reviewers have said before about it: This book broke me, completely and utterly. In the very worst ways, in the very best ways. 
 This book's subject is quite frankly, not to everyone's tastes. I think most readers will either be a) appalled or b) touched and moved by this book. The subject matter and how it is handled ensures that there is no grey line. You will either love it, or you will hate it. There's going to be very few opinions in-between. I think it is a completely divisive book. 
 If you start reading this book thinking it's going to try to convince you to fuck your brother/sister or that it's ok to screw around with them, you would be wrong. I don't think there is a message in this book as far as "it's ok to do X or Y given Z circumstance." I do not feel that the author is trying to impose some sort of morality or send a message of acceptance of incest. It is just a story, albeit an extremely well-written story. It is about two people who have come to rely on each other, having been forced to grow up ahead of their time, under circumstances beyond their control. It is a survivor's bond, of sorts. It is a relationship based on friendship, mutual experiences, trust, love...and a shared background of hardship. The two people just happened to be brothers and sisters. 
 I'm not going to take a side and say whether the relationship was correct, or morally repugnant, or abusive. What I can say is that this book sold me on the idea of Lochan and Maya, and how their relationship eventually wound up to what it was. 
 I think it's a lot harder for people to accept the idea of contemporary incest. The cases we've read about these days in the news like the parents abusing and impregnating their own kids, are pretty damned horrific, and I do not judge anyone at all for choosing to stay away from this book and its subject matter. It is a extremely hard issue to address, much less in this manner. I think society is more open...wrong word, not so much open, but more like grudgingly accepting of incest in the past because it was a part of history within ruling dynasties, and therefore viewed as inevitable or even acceptable within some settings and places. It's certainly out there a lot lately, with the rampant incest in House Lannister between Jamie and Cersei, with the "shipping" of Cesare and Lucretia in The Borgias. Hell, there are awkward fanfiction of Supernatural's Wincest all over the place. However, putting this subject in a contemporary setting, with realistic characters, is a totally different story. 
 Maybe it's easier for me to take the concept of incest lightly, having no siblings of the opposite sex, but I entered this book with an open mind and this book turned out to be such a reward. Lately, my reviews have been set out to prove a point, to prove the rating that I wound up giving the book is justified. I tend to use quotes when permitted, and I will highlight most of the relevant points to emphasize the facts as I make note of them. There will be none such here, because if I do it for this book, I will have to reread it, and that's not an experience I wish to repeat. 
 Did I say earlier that it broke me? Because it did. There are books I love that I can reread repeatedly, and this is not one of them. I'm not an emotional person; I was, but life tends to slowly erase most of our weakness, and the child who once cried in 5th grade during a class reading of Where the Red Fern Grows has grown up to be an adult who doesn't blink at seeing blood and guts onscreen and who laughs her way through the majority of tearjerkers films. Life has a tendency to desensitize the most delicate of personalities. 
 Which is why I was so utterly unprepared for the pure visceral reaction this book wrought upon me. Which is why after an all-night marathon session of reading, at 6 AM, I found myself muffling my choking, heaving sobs into a pillow so that my sister wouldn't hear me from the next room to save myself from having to reply with "I just read this book about a brother and sister who fell in love, and it was really sad." Talk about awkward. I've cried that hard about five times in my life, and if one of those times happens to be this book...judge me how you will. 
 You might end up loving this book as much as I do, you might end up absolutely revolted by it. However your opinion might fall in the end, I think this book at least deserves to be read.