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halthemonarch's review against another edition
4.0
I read another review with the name Debra Lafave; I had no idea who that was so I looked her up and oh boy.. I guess she was Nutting’s inspiration.
This is a book about a pedophile teacher who is attracted to teenage boys. Not just any teenage boys, but the prepubescent ones who are still androgynous and have yet to grow into their manhood. Our protagonist is a cold, businesslike, hateful woman called Celeste Price, a middle school teacher who uses her job as an opportunity to vet and poach her prey. She’s robotic unless she’s talking about her libido, which seems endless for a gaggle of 2-pumps. Celeste is blonde, beautiful, youthful, and rich by marriage, married to a cop called Ford who set them up comfortably with his family money. She’s 26, and the boys she rubs up against in school corridors are 13-14, and Celeste is very particular about that window. When the boys start showing any sign of aging, it repulses her. The taboo of it, of them looking like children in their little league uniforms or looking otherwise starkly young in juvenile activities is what gets her off. Her thirty-something-year-old husband repulses her, but Ford just thinks he has an unusually cold trophy wife who rarely puts out and is excessively busy during the school year.
What’s more, she knows what she’s doing is wrong. I think that’s a part of it too, the thrill she gets thinking about whatever building she’s in being surrounded by the police, or worrying that a charge she’d unbuttoned for would call the cops or tell the principal-- and yet, she continues. In graphic detail. I’ve never read Lolita (I guess I should? But ugh. I barely made it through this book, I don’t think I could stomach a gender-swapped version wherein the protagonist tries to justify his own motives in his head? But then again, what does that say about me or society at large that I’m more comfortable reading about a grown woman abusing young boys than I am a grown man abusing girls? Jesus, anyway,) but from what I gather from other reviews that mention it as a benchmark, Lolita doesn’t go into perverse detail with what the protagonist does when he manipulates these girls into doing what he wants them to do; Tampa describes in lurid, despicable, macabre detail what she does with Jack, Jack’s dad, with Boyd, and even the few times she recounts being sexual with Ford. Especially when she’s hunting down “her preferences”, she drags her sex across desk corners, greets her would-be conquests with corny one-liners, and describes raping them in horrible detail. She also goes in on why she has this “preference” of hers. She likes to feel special, to be the first and the best. She describes the look on a college mate’s younger brother’s face when she flashed him as “seeing fresh snow for the first time” Celeste likes the bumbling inexperience, the innocence and naiveness, and the middle part of the process of corrupting them-- too timid in the beginning means she doesn’t get her rocks off, but too forceful and assured near the end she views as a sign of maturity and budding manhood. Neither adult men or women interest Celeste, it’s all about the kids.
And in between being horrified and grossed out by every sex scene, the plot was *gripping*. Like the season one/first book of You (Caroline Kepnes), you know Celeste and Joe should be put on the Handmaid’s Tale’s (Margaret Atwood) wall, or perhaps subjected to a salvaging, but every twist sends a terrible frisson down your spine. You wish them caught, but when the twist happens you *and* Celeste/Joe are shivering.
Spoilers for the plot from here on in-- The nosy and belligerent teacher that latches onto Celeste is suspicious at first, but she manages to dip under that. Celeste and Jack are caught once in his home and they both have to scramble apart and concoct a lie in the 15 seconds it took his father to arrive in the kitchen. The next time they are caught is a little more difficult to explain away, so Celest jumps Jack’s dad’s bones to assuage suspicion and thus, opens a new can of worms. The third and final time they’re caught, Jack’s dad has a heart attack and Celeste chooses to let him die in order to bow-tie her predicament. When Jack, who naively expects he and Celeste to date through college, goes to live with his mom and keeps quiet about his part in his father’s heart attack, and in helping Celeste flee the house that night by moving his father’s car. Celeste descends upon new game, a little boy with braces and perversions for Celeste to cater to-- it made logistical sense for her to rape Boyd in *Jack’s* empty house, so she does until one night Jack catches them in the act. Jack pushes Boyd and runs, and Celeste, naked, grabs a knife to go after him. Nosy neighbor, who Celest had previously scraped off onto nosy co-worker teacher as a volunteer, gives Celeste a blanket, and the police whisk her away for pictures and an interrogation. In all the kerfuffle— the he-said-she-said, and the most persuasive lawyer Ford’s family can by, on the condition that after the divorce she leaves Ford’s name entirely out of her mouth, she’s held briefly and then free. She moves to Tampa and lives in a trailer under a fake name, but still frequents malls and adolescent hang-out spots for opportunities to slake her thirst.
In the beginning, I predicted she would get away with it. I whopped when she was caught, but when the lawyer started lawyering, I knew my first instinct had been right. Sure, she lost everything and had a different life by the end, but she was still free to abuse children thereafter. She never takes the blame either, even in her introspections, she wishes Jack could have been more reasonable upon discovering his adult girlfriend sleeping with another kid in his house, on his bed. Imagine what he must think years later-- and how this woman had destroyed his life! His father wouldn’t have had that heart attack if not for her. She let him die, and all she has to say for herself is:
“Put your hands on my breasts,” I instructed. “I have to tell you something traumatic and you need to be reminded of all the good that’s here in the world for you to enjoy.” Wordlessly, Jack clutched his palms onto my breasts and swallowed.
“Your father had a heart attack.”
I’ll include two more quotes that were included in this review because I thought they were poignant examples of Celeste’s narcissism as well:
I wondered what percentage of the Jefferson Junior High students – if I came to them in the middle of the night, naked – would agree to have sex with me even if it would mean they’d die forty-eight hours later. I guessed there would be at least a small few.
and
Like a tollbooth in his memory, every partner he’d have afterward would have to pass through the gate of my comparison, and it would be a losing comparison.
Also, the ending line about how she still masturbates to fantasies of Jack and Boyd, and despite everything she’d put them both through, the thing that was turning her off was the thought that the boys were likely eighteen and becoming men now; that the only way she could finish was if she imagined neither of them leaving the house that night alive. Sick, twisted, memorable in a... Flowers In the Attic, Gone Girl, You, These Violent Delights kind of way, except worse because there’s pedophilia. What's that genre called? Disturbingly taboo, disgusting, macabre, yet interesting? "Thriller" seems wrong.
This is a book about a pedophile teacher who is attracted to teenage boys. Not just any teenage boys, but the prepubescent ones who are still androgynous and have yet to grow into their manhood. Our protagonist is a cold, businesslike, hateful woman called Celeste Price, a middle school teacher who uses her job as an opportunity to vet and poach her prey. She’s robotic unless she’s talking about her libido, which seems endless for a gaggle of 2-pumps. Celeste is blonde, beautiful, youthful, and rich by marriage, married to a cop called Ford who set them up comfortably with his family money. She’s 26, and the boys she rubs up against in school corridors are 13-14, and Celeste is very particular about that window. When the boys start showing any sign of aging, it repulses her. The taboo of it, of them looking like children in their little league uniforms or looking otherwise starkly young in juvenile activities is what gets her off. Her thirty-something-year-old husband repulses her, but Ford just thinks he has an unusually cold trophy wife who rarely puts out and is excessively busy during the school year.
What’s more, she knows what she’s doing is wrong. I think that’s a part of it too, the thrill she gets thinking about whatever building she’s in being surrounded by the police, or worrying that a charge she’d unbuttoned for would call the cops or tell the principal-- and yet, she continues. In graphic detail. I’ve never read Lolita (I guess I should? But ugh. I barely made it through this book, I don’t think I could stomach a gender-swapped version wherein the protagonist tries to justify his own motives in his head? But then again, what does that say about me or society at large that I’m more comfortable reading about a grown woman abusing young boys than I am a grown man abusing girls? Jesus, anyway,) but from what I gather from other reviews that mention it as a benchmark, Lolita doesn’t go into perverse detail with what the protagonist does when he manipulates these girls into doing what he wants them to do; Tampa describes in lurid, despicable, macabre detail what she does with Jack, Jack’s dad, with Boyd, and even the few times she recounts being sexual with Ford. Especially when she’s hunting down “her preferences”, she drags her sex across desk corners, greets her would-be conquests with corny one-liners, and describes raping them in horrible detail. She also goes in on why she has this “preference” of hers. She likes to feel special, to be the first and the best. She describes the look on a college mate’s younger brother’s face when she flashed him as “seeing fresh snow for the first time” Celeste likes the bumbling inexperience, the innocence and naiveness, and the middle part of the process of corrupting them-- too timid in the beginning means she doesn’t get her rocks off, but too forceful and assured near the end she views as a sign of maturity and budding manhood. Neither adult men or women interest Celeste, it’s all about the kids.
And in between being horrified and grossed out by every sex scene, the plot was *gripping*. Like the season one/first book of You (Caroline Kepnes), you know Celeste and Joe should be put on the Handmaid’s Tale’s (Margaret Atwood) wall, or perhaps subjected to a salvaging, but every twist sends a terrible frisson down your spine. You wish them caught, but when the twist happens you *and* Celeste/Joe are shivering.
Spoilers for the plot from here on in-- The nosy and belligerent teacher that latches onto Celeste is suspicious at first, but she manages to dip under that. Celeste and Jack are caught once in his home and they both have to scramble apart and concoct a lie in the 15 seconds it took his father to arrive in the kitchen. The next time they are caught is a little more difficult to explain away, so Celest jumps Jack’s dad’s bones to assuage suspicion and thus, opens a new can of worms. The third and final time they’re caught, Jack’s dad has a heart attack and Celeste chooses to let him die in order to bow-tie her predicament. When Jack, who naively expects he and Celeste to date through college, goes to live with his mom and keeps quiet about his part in his father’s heart attack, and in helping Celeste flee the house that night by moving his father’s car. Celeste descends upon new game, a little boy with braces and perversions for Celeste to cater to-- it made logistical sense for her to rape Boyd in *Jack’s* empty house, so she does until one night Jack catches them in the act. Jack pushes Boyd and runs, and Celeste, naked, grabs a knife to go after him. Nosy neighbor, who Celest had previously scraped off onto nosy co-worker teacher as a volunteer, gives Celeste a blanket, and the police whisk her away for pictures and an interrogation. In all the kerfuffle— the he-said-she-said, and the most persuasive lawyer Ford’s family can by, on the condition that after the divorce she leaves Ford’s name entirely out of her mouth, she’s held briefly and then free. She moves to Tampa and lives in a trailer under a fake name, but still frequents malls and adolescent hang-out spots for opportunities to slake her thirst.
In the beginning, I predicted she would get away with it. I whopped when she was caught, but when the lawyer started lawyering, I knew my first instinct had been right. Sure, she lost everything and had a different life by the end, but she was still free to abuse children thereafter. She never takes the blame either, even in her introspections, she wishes Jack could have been more reasonable upon discovering his adult girlfriend sleeping with another kid in his house, on his bed. Imagine what he must think years later-- and how this woman had destroyed his life! His father wouldn’t have had that heart attack if not for her. She let him die, and all she has to say for herself is:
“Put your hands on my breasts,” I instructed. “I have to tell you something traumatic and you need to be reminded of all the good that’s here in the world for you to enjoy.” Wordlessly, Jack clutched his palms onto my breasts and swallowed.
“Your father had a heart attack.”
I’ll include two more quotes that were included in this review because I thought they were poignant examples of Celeste’s narcissism as well:
I wondered what percentage of the Jefferson Junior High students – if I came to them in the middle of the night, naked – would agree to have sex with me even if it would mean they’d die forty-eight hours later. I guessed there would be at least a small few.
and
Like a tollbooth in his memory, every partner he’d have afterward would have to pass through the gate of my comparison, and it would be a losing comparison.
Also, the ending line about how she still masturbates to fantasies of Jack and Boyd, and despite everything she’d put them both through, the thing that was turning her off was the thought that the boys were likely eighteen and becoming men now; that the only way she could finish was if she imagined neither of them leaving the house that night alive. Sick, twisted, memorable in a... Flowers In the Attic, Gone Girl, You, These Violent Delights kind of way, except worse because there’s pedophilia. What's that genre called? Disturbingly taboo, disgusting, macabre, yet interesting? "Thriller" seems wrong.
kristinajoy07's review against another edition
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
emreadsxo's review against another edition
1.0
***DNF*** i’m sorry i could not. what even is this book. i can’t. idek what page i got to. i’ve heard people say the ending is good and kinda brings things into perspective but i can’t keep reading. nope. no thank you
martypartyyy's review against another edition
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
wikstiel's review against another edition
3.75
It's like watching a car crash get progressively worse but you can't look away, this is how this book feels.
Yet I chose to keep reading, the graphic descriptions made me sick and I had to put the book away at times.
Yet I chose to keep reading, the graphic descriptions made me sick and I had to put the book away at times.
millieradel's review against another edition
4.0
I really enjoyed the way this book was written. Alissa Nutting is detailed and graphic with her descriptions and makes you feel incredibly uncomfortable. I had to take breaks after reading and listening to some parts. But if you like weird twisted sick shit - go for it.
benjy697's review against another edition
dark
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
reverieain's review against another edition
4.0
I cant describe how many times my jaw dropped while reading this book at first. I didn't expect it to be so detailed. Its a quite thought provoking book of a pedophile point of view and I was reading this book at the first place because I LOVE reading things that would makes me think and think, living in a head of a person who i can never relate to. The storytelling is very good and fast paced that you won't see it coming every single time.
The main character is unapologetic, narcissistic, disturbing in a way it seems too bad to be true??? And it's literally mind blowing how the mind works.
The only problem is the sexual moments are always described in detail to the point that i feel like it is so unnecessary. Like it constantly wore me out with the amount of small disturbing erotic details like 'his b*ll bouncing', and god knows many more things that was written that i would rather not say. But since its from the main character point of view, it's probably unfiltered. I kinda get it. But still.. its very very detailed. It's quite uncomfortable since it is minor that we are talking about. But yea its a way to empathize how disgusting the main character is.
I was enraged when i read the ending. Very very frustrating. I dont know how to explain how disturbed I am. This book definitely has the biggest personal impact in me and i will never forget about how this book ruined me as a person.
The main character is unapologetic, narcissistic, disturbing in a way it seems too bad to be true??? And it's literally mind blowing how the mind works.
The only problem is the sexual moments are always described in detail to the point that i feel like it is so unnecessary. Like it constantly wore me out with the amount of small disturbing erotic details like 'his b*ll bouncing', and god knows many more things that was written that i would rather not say. But since its from the main character point of view, it's probably unfiltered. I kinda get it. But still.. its very very detailed. It's quite uncomfortable since it is minor that we are talking about. But yea its a way to empathize how disgusting the main character is.
I was enraged when i read the ending. Very very frustrating. I dont know how to explain how disturbed I am. This book definitely has the biggest personal impact in me and i will never forget about how this book ruined me as a person.
alexab0975's review against another edition
1.0
If I could give this zero stars I would….don’t waste your time. I skimmed pretty much all of it after the first page
emily1602's review against another edition
Reminded me of Anatomy of a Scandal from Sheba’s perspective (I thought Janet was going to play a bigger role than she did). Darkly funny in places at the start, then just depressing, which is understandable given the subject matter. As long as Celeste is beautiful (while acting like she does not realize it, that is very important) no one notices that she is, in her own words, ‘a soulless pervert.’ The writing overall is okay.