Tampa - Alissa Nutting, and Boy Toy - Barry Lyga

Sometimes you intentionally read back-to-back books about WWII because you’re trying to learn something, and sometimes you accidentally read back-to-back books about female teachers seducing early adolescent boys because weirdly, there are at least two books on this theme, and you actually didn't know what Boy Toy was about before you picked it up (you knew about Tampa, though, on account of having internets and eyes).

Boy Toy is about the experience of victimhood, and the impact of abuse on one boy’s life, how he attempted-rapes a school friend because he doesn’t know any other way to spend Seven Minutes in Heaven. Josh's story starts as he begins a timid reconciliation with this friend, as college looms, and as his abuser's release date approaches. You get the story of his abuse through flashbacks - like, literal ones that crash down on him when he leasts expects it and completely disrupt his life. They are a convenient narrative device and also super harrowing. 

And Josh's relationship with Eve isn't titillating or lurid, it's awkward. But also innocent and natural-seeming in its inception. But also VERY WRONG. It's a book with complexity and layers, is what I'm saying.

Tampa, on the other hand, is the literal worst. I mean, it's gross. It's beyond gross. I'm no prude; we all know I read Outlander for the naughty bits, but Tampa is repellant from the opening sentence and gets ABSOLUTELY ZERO BETTER by the end. There's just...there's no point.

Celeste is a 26-year-old middle school teacher who became one so that she could seduce 14-year-old boys. She's married to a rich, good-looking cop whose ultimate crime seems to be that he wants to have sex with her sometimes, but you'd never know that from her attitude. As far as Celeste is concerned, EVERYONE EVER BORN EVER has smarmy laughs, or cankles, or shirts with low thread count, or belts that sit too high, or a blobby nose. Even if she weren't raping barely-pubescent boys, you'd be like, Ugh, Celeste is an awful person. 

But she is, and it's awful. She's awful. And that is literally the entirety of the book, with every action seen through the lens of how much she wants to seduce one of her students. And then she does, and they have lots of sex because he's fourteen and his parents are divorced and his dad is negligent and that's problematic in itself, but then one day his dad comes home early and discovers them and HAS A HEART ATTACK AND DIES AND SHE STANDS THERE AND LETS IT HAPPEN SO SHE WON'T GET CAUGHT. 

And then later she does get caught and goes to court and is given a plea bargain because hotness and moves to a beach town where she can get paid under the table and not give out her real name and seduce teenage boys from out of town. ANNNNNNND SCENE.

Amanda makes the excellent point that Celeste is exactly what society wants from women: super-hot, very into sex, yet friendly and polite (OUTSIDE HER OWN HEAD, I MEAN), and discusses the social culpability in creating such a monster. I agree that said point could have been louder-made if it wasn't so drowned out by the And here's what it's like to have sex with a fourteen-year-old, IN DETAIL.

So if you're in the mood for a book about teachers and students (I don't know what you're into), but don't want to feel super-gross for the rest of the week, I'd recommend Boy Toy. If you want to be an educated part of the discussion of how gross Tampa is, here be dragons. Bosomy, rapey dragons.

(Sidebar: OMG the alternate cover.
 I mean, right?)