Opposites
I would like to take a moment to thank the author for providing me a complimentary copy of her book in exchange for an honest review. Providing such does not sway my review at all.Honestly, about twentysomething pages in I was ready to chuck this book out the window. No, the story wasn't bad. No, the sex scenes weren't offensive. The fact is, that I needed a organizer because there were so many names tossed in to the pot at this time that I couldn't keep track of who was who at that moment. I stepped away for a few moments though and came back to it, and it was like the book read my mind because suddenly all the extra names went away and the actual story really started.
From the beginning the book blurb really attracted me to this book. Our future world were men married men, women married women and anything else was just seen as odd and these Opposites would be banished from influential roles and made to live as Outkasts. Hmmm..what would that be like? Yes, our current world is coming around to the LGBT community, but we are nowhere near where we should be. Thankfully our world is ever evolving. I remember being a young child and the whispers heard about a friends mom because she was, gasp, divorced. It wasn't that long ago when African Americans couldn't even drink out of the same water fountains as whites. It also wasn't that long ago when living together before marriage was considered a huge sin and if that couple was interracial, it was just blasphemous. There are still people in our world that are prejudice, but there are even more people in this world that are open minded and excepting. This book and the author gives the reader an eye opener, not just to the physical side of a relationship, with the portrayal of the power of love to a level that just takes the readers breath away.
The story itself is a statement of how love is love. It is not a life style choice, but the way you are from birth. There are instant attractions and how confusing it is for a person who was raised a certain way to experience an attraction that is contradictory to their upbringing. In this case, how being attracted to the opposite sex is abnormal. How families deal with the contradiction and how they realize that it isn't who a person loves that defines them but how they are the same person through and through and that love is love.
There is also a supernatural element to the story that is very intriguing. Aiyan has a deep connection with those he is closest too and can feel when they are hurt or in harms way. Aiya has some element of the same and later in the story things are starting to get pieced together. It brought out the questions that I had in the back of my mind while reading and gave a perspective to them.
This isn't just the story of Aiyan and Aiya, but also about their father and mothers and their partners family and how even the most promiscuous person can find their soulmate in the most peculiar of situations. This is not a book for those that are offended by graphic sexual situations. I also do not recommend this book to those under the age of 18. Personally, I didn't realize just how graphic this book was until I actually started reading it. This book is not one I would normally read, but I have a pretty open mind about sex and sexuality so I was not offended by what was told, in graphic details.
