Forbidden [Paperback]

Look out, Alyson Noel. Make way, Becca Fitzpatrick. Heads up, Lauren Kate. There is a spectacular new Young Adult (YA) writing team on the horizon!

Forbidden, authored by a mother and son writing team is their debut supernatural novel chocked full of intrigue, romance and humor. But whyever is a Jane Austen blog site reviewing such a book? One with not even a mention of Mr. Darcy, nor a reference to Jane Austen, nor anything remotely Regency? Simply thus. One of the authors, none other than the international best-selling author of The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen as well as the award winning The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte, Syrie James, along with her son, Ryan M. James, ventures to offer us a larger allowance of prose to our daily study.

High school sophomore, Claire Brennan is tired of constantly moving from city to city. Every time she seems to put down roots, her paranoid, seemingly hippie mother decides to pull up stakes and start anew. New city. New school. But here at Emerson Academy, in the posh Brentwood, California community, not only does Claire love her prestigious school and value the scholarship she has worked these last two years to maintain but also her two bosom buddies, Erica and Brian, whom she shares everything with. So who can blame her for not telling her mother about her newly discovered psychic powers and the visions warning her of imminent peril? Then there is Alec MacKenzie, new man on campus with the exotic Scottish accent and handsome good looks. Who is he? After he somehow saves them from being crushed by falling scaffolding... his story of being orphaned at an early age, lived all over the world with various relations and most recently emancipated from a rich uncle... seems more and more sketchy, putting Claire and her friends on high alert. "Even if you can explain away all those other things, the fact is, I saw those platforms hover for a moment in mid-fall before being tipped, I'm telling you, Alec held them up - somehow - with his mind, and he made them fall to the side. He may not be a vampire, but he's... I don't know... telekinetic." p. 87

What Claire doesn't know is Alec is a Grigori, an earthly angel bound to watch and sometimes eliminate the descendants of his angelic forefathers, and chose Emerson Academy to hide from those duties, living amongst the humans as one of them. "So, when you hugged - did you feel Alec's heartbeat? Claire stifled a laugh. She looked at Brian from her seat and nodded emphatically, patting her chest one-handed with a rapid drumbeat. He grinned triumphantly and made his hand for her to turn the note over. She did. It read: See. Told you. He's not a vampire." p.118 Who would have thought Alec would end up falling in love with Claire, a newly Awakened Nephilim, a half angel, a Halfblood... one whose very existence is forbidden.

At first Alec appears aloof, but his demeanor improves on acquaintance. "Claire could feel the heat emanating from his body. Suddenly, all she could think about was that moment in her dream when he'd almost kissed her. He was looking at her now in the same way. The fear and doubt she'd been harboring began to trickle away. Whoever Alec was -whatever he was -Claire realized she wouldn't mind if he did kiss her." p.157 As the two discover each other, as Claire learns about her heritage and her newly discovered powers, the stakes rise and are no longer about first kisses and crushes. "If there entire relationship was against Grigori law, what would happen if they pursued it?" p.211 It seems others have discovered her existence now and the hunt is on. Alec vows to protect her from those he is escaping as well as The Fallen, the evil ones he has hunted for a century. "...what are you going to do? Turn me into your hangman committee? Have me executed?" "That's what I should do." Vincent finished off his wine and sighed. "But Alec has begged me to reconsider. It seems you've become so important to him, he's willing to put many lives at risk. So we've made a deal." p.307

If this all seems familiar, as in "We can't be together... I'll hurt you," Bella and Edward from Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga; or the mysterious, handsome teenage boy romances the odd girl with new found powers, Ever and Damen from Alyson Noel's Immortals series; or girl falling in love with angel protector with Fallen angels all about them, Nora and Patch from Becca Fitzgerald's Hush Hush series and Daniel and Luce from Lauren Kate's Fallen series... I can promise you it's not a copycat novel. Yes, there may be similarities but I interpreted it as part of the genre and following angel lore. It was very much about trust, discovery, and love. I totally enjoyed this. I was entertained by the inspired prose, witty dialogue, the humorous actions and reactions, and of course, the honest, pure character development. The ending will leave you not quite hanging off a cliff by your fingernails... but I assure you, I look forward to James and James next installment. This may be written for Young Adults, however, might I also suggest, for the young at heart? (As per my review at Austenprose.)

This was such a good read that I want more! The story was quite addicting and I could not put it down. I managed to finish reading it in a day and a half. I do hope there will be a sequel. Alec and Claire deserve more story and I am sure all your fans like(me)would be in heaven. I Loved everything!!! I also would love to find out what happened to her father, maybe have him come back into her and her mother's life,go into more depth on the grigori/nephili lore.

Reviewed originally for fic-talk.com, visit for more reviews!

I'm starting to wonder if a lovelorn angel lusting after a human or chasing after a nephilim is the new trend coming in on the tail of vampire fiction. Forbidden, by mother and son duo Syrie and Ryan James can definitely be slipped in with the forlorn angel breaking the code of his angelic lifestyle that seems to be the current trend in the YA paranormal genre. Forbidden follows Claire, who essentially lives a gypsy lifestyle with her mother, flitting from place to place with no real reason. During this book, Claire and her mother have remained in one place for nearly two years and Claire is currently enrolled in an elite, private academy where she has to bust her butt to maintain a high GPA so she can stay in. Of course, as any female lead in current YA fiction, she's super smart and has no problem maintaining the perfect grades (personally, the "perfect student" female lead is getting a bit old to me. Someone, create an original character please, one with spunk and some real flaws? Thanks.)

Enter Alec, the mysterious, handsome stranger who shows up on registration day and oddly attaches himself to Claire and her friends. It's made clear almost immediately that he's got a secret that he's hiding, and that he's not everything he seems to be. *cue melodramatic music* Dun..dun..dunnnnnnnn

I want to make something clear here, I have instant disdain for any YA book that creates an immediate and powerful love between two adolescent characters. I think it's important that young readers are exposed to characters who develop a love based on getting to know one another, and spending time together, not seeing each other from across the lawn and feeling sparks arc across the entire campus as they immediately fall head over heels in love with one another without uttering a word. Okay, so maybe I exagerated some. Alec and Claire didn't fall in love like that, but it was pretty quick and unrealistic, and I'm not a fan of a love with no sound base.

Also, I have issues when a book has scenes that are uncomfortably similar to scenes in other extremely popular YA books, like...when Alec miraculously appeared out of no where and saved Claire from a falling beam in a construction zone and disappeared, as if nothing had happened. It was eerily reminiscent of a certain vampire/human girl/car saving scene in another book. Do I really need to give you the name? Really?

Which that leads me to the characters. Is it just me, or do all female characters in YA fiction now have to be astonishingly smart yet dense at the same time, oblivious to everything around them. Also, do they have to be quiet, mousy, and reserved, and oddly unpopular even though they are highly attractive (and don't forget, they can't realize their pretty. That's a no-no in YA fiction, guys.) And do all male leads in YA fiction have to be hot, brooding, mysterious, secretive, and almost a "bad boy" by definition? Because if so, this book hit stereotypical YA fictional characters right on the bullseye, cause that was Claire and Alec to a T.

One good point in the book was the writing style. It was very age appropriate considering the audience the book was geared too, and it was well written. The words and punctuation were used correctly, there weren't a ton of glaring errors hiding in the paragraphs, and the sentence structure flowed nicely. It was written as I would expect, and want, a YA novel to be written. Forbidden definitely gets a thumbs up for me in writing style!

Overall, I can't say that I was a fan of Forbidden. I found it to be drawing from too many other YA novels in plot, characterizations, and general concept. I also had issues with the instant love between lead characters, the predictable outcome at the end, and the lack of answers at the end of the book. I know it's first in a series, but seriously, there still needs to be a decent amount of closure at the end of the book. I dont foresee myself picking up the next book in the series, and I can't see myself recommending this book to anyone over the age of 13.

Two Stars