The Forbidden Book
by Sacha Lamb
Levine Querido, 2024. 251 pages.
Review written February 18, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Sidney Taylor Young Adult Silver Medal
The Forbidden Book is another brilliant paranormal story playing off Jewish folklore, as with When the Angels Left the Old Country that I enjoyed so much. This one is set in medieval Eastern Europe.
As the book opens, a lumber merchant’s daughter named Sorel is about to be married to the rebbe’s son from the nearby city. She knows she feels like the girl dressed up in the wedding clothes is a stranger, and she wants to leave. But it’s when she hears a voice in her head saying that they’ll go with her that she leaps out the window and flees.
She steals the stable-boy’s clothes where he stashed them in the stable, along with a knife. She cuts her hair short and sets out, feeling oddly free.
I thought it was a story about a young transgender man, but it turns out there’s more to the voice she heard than her own wishful thinking. When asked her name, Sorel comes up with Isser Jacobs, and before long, she gets attacked in an alley by thugs looking for Isser Jacobs and something he stole. But a giant black dog interrupts the attack and Sorel escapes.
But she’s worried about the girl, a friend of the real Isser, that the thugs mentioned. One thing leads to another, and Sorel and a small group of others are trying to find out what happened to Isser and looking for a magic book that he stole, which was written by the Angel of Death.
The book is full of that touch of magic and reads like a mystical folktale. Sorel has some encounters with spirits before she’s through and needs to think about what she actually wants for her life.
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/forbidden_book.html
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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.
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