three stars is indicative of my personal enjoyment of the book, but that does not change the fact that this author has done something extraordinary, and this book should probably be read by most people. let's call this 3 3/4 stars for fun. 
 why did i read this?? duh, obviously, i wanted to see what kind of writing chops this lady had to think she could write a Y/A book about brother-sister incest. how do you market the taboo to the teen set? this is the same impulse that made me read living dead girl - to take a peek at the mechanics of this kind of writing. i find it fascinating. how do you handle this kind of subject matter without going all-out lurid and titillating shock-value tawdry? greg, upon hearing i was reading this, volunteered to write a YA book about "a teen that fucks a dead dog." that one would be harder to pull off without crossing that poor taste line. this one manages very gracefully, and i am very impressed with both her restraint and her candor. 
 because when i was a teen, books like forever were the big dirrrty books, and although i never read that one when i was young, i read it recently, and lord, is it boring. this book may not ultimately have managed to fall into my "best books ever" category, but that's just me and realistic YA, it's nothing lacking in the book.i still find her achievement impressive, and it is never boring. 
 there are so many amazing things about this book. lochan and maya are two older teens raising up their three younger siblings while their single mom goes out trying to make up for all the fun she missed out on while she was stuck making all of them. their relationship is very much like that of any tired and harried young couple with young children, except for that little curveball that they are themselves siblings. in this claustrophobic environment of bill-paying and lunch-making and emergency room visits, while still attending high school with all of its pressures, they cling to each other emotionally, and eventually cross that line. some of this is facilitated by lochan's having zero social skills or even any social contact outside of the family. despite being some kind of academic star, he has some pretty seriously stunted emotional development and difficulty communicating outside of the family. maya is more complicated. she has a social set, she has friends and schoolgirl crushes, but nothing can compare to the bond she shares with lochan - their difficult childhood made them one soul divided and all that. there is a lot of slow build, and a lot of pushing away and second-guessing, which makes the idea more believable. nothing is done without considering the danger of the relationship, and the nutty thing is, i totally found myself rooting for them. 
 this has to go on my icky-sex shelf because incest is still icky, but in this example, it is much less icky than usual because it is wholly consensual, and the circumstances are so unusual. not flowers in the attic unusual, but pretty close. but like flowers in the attic, there are consequences to every action. and they unspool pretty much as you expect, on the bitter side of bittersweet. 
 definitely worth reading, just to see how it's all done.