Review: Boy Toy by Barry Lyga

Yay, a brand new review! Where I'm not at all working on catching up on all of the books I've read while I've been on my blogging hiatus. I bought Boy Toy at the Books of Wonder signing on Sunday. I started reading it Monday night and could hardly put it down until I finished it last night. As the blurb on the cover says, this is a disturbing book, and it should be - you can't deal with issues of teachers sexually abusing students lightly. But Lyga handles the subject deftly here.

In seventh grade, Josh Mendel had probably the hottest history teacher in school. Mrs. Sherman was young, had a killer body and, best of all, thought Josh was a genius at history and treated him like an adult, rather than a 12 year old middle schooler like everyone else did. When she asked him to help her with a project for grad school - a project that involved staying at her apartment after school - he jumped at the chance. Not just because she was hot, but she and her husband also had a huge video game collection. Heaven for a twelve year old.

Slowly, Mrs. Sherman - now Eve to Josh - began treating him more and more like an adult. Giving him sips of wine, and then making the big leap to kissing him and using him as a lover, rather than a student.

Eve and Josh carry out the illicit relationship after school for months, until it all blows up during a game of spin the bottle at the birthday party of Rachel, one of Josh's best friends. Suddenly, not only do Josh's parents find out about the affair, but the entire school - maybe the entire city knows. To Josh it doesn't matter that his name was never published in the newspaper or printed in the trial records - everyone knew who had been screwing (or was being screwed by) the hot history teacher.

Now it's Josh's senior year of high school, mere weeks from graduation. The baseball season is winding down, careening towards one final blowout game with their rivals; Josh is anxiously awaiting the results of his college applications; Rachel, who Josh almost raped at her birthday party five years ago, leading to the revelation of his relationship with Mrs. Sherman, suddenly wants to start talking to Josh again, or maybe do more than just talk.

And Mrs. Sherman is being released from prison early, less than five years into her original 15 year sentance.

Josh's life immediately begins to go into a tailspin - he's constantly afraid he's going to run into her, despite the restraining order, and he doesn't know how he'll react when he does see her. He's still convinced that everyone is watching his every move and thinking about his history with Mrs. Sherman, which stands in the way of his burgeoning relationship with Rachel. the end of senior year is turning out to be a lot more complicated than Josh ever expected it would be.

I found myself often thinking of Living Dead Girl while I was reading this - not because of any similarities but because of how differently they treat relatively similar subjects. While Living Dead Girl follows a girl who is still very much being abused, and being abused by a stranger rather than a teacher, everything about the book was very spare. In contrast, Boy Toy inundates you with details, while it's not overly graphic, there's never any question about what Eve is doing with Josh, but the details also come from seeing the relationship build from normal teacher-student to something much more sinister (and the uncomfortable feeling of following the progression knowing that something terrible is going to happen and unable to warn naive and hopeful Josh about it). Alice often comes across as being very disconnected from what's happening to her, and in a very different way Josh does as well (it takes him a long time before he's able to understand that he did not cause Mrs. Sherman to abuse him - hell, it takes him a long time to qualify it as "abuse").

The details of the relationship and the abuse come in two large info dumps in the middle of the narrative. Both are prompted by the character who is probably my least favorite - Rachel, Josh's girlfriend. I just felt incredibly angry at how she manipulated and forced Josh to divulge all of the details of the abuse and the ensuing trial - at first I was hoping it was going to be some sort of forshadowing to show this perfect girl wasn't so perfect afterall, but in retrospect it seems more like lazy storytelling: Lyga needed a way to give us this information, and he chose Rachel pestering Josh until he caved at 3 in the morning to be the instigator. Ultimately it meant that a large part of the romance in the book was lost on me because I couldn't see Josh and Rachel's relationship as a wholly positive thing.

I did, however, love the baseball that was woven throughout the book - and not just playing the game, but the statistics as well. Josh is something of a math genius, and part of that comes through in his constant thoughts about baseball stats - which really was a great way to lighten some of the heavier moments in the text.

Despite my huge problem with Rachel, I found this to be an absolutely fascinating and compelling read that I highly recommend.

Review: Forever Changes by Brendan Halpin

While reading this book, I couldn't help but have flashbacks to middle school, when I was obsessed with Lurlene McDaniel books. That's not to say that McDaniel's books and Forever Changes actually have anything in common - they're really quite different, except for starring teenagers with terminal illnesses - but I think the worry was always there in the back of my mind that at any moment this well written book would descend into narm.

Thankfully, it didn't.

Brianna is a senior in high school with cystic fibrosis. After having watched another friend with cystic fibrosis die recently, Brianna is probably the only person in her AP calculus class that isn't obsessing over getting college credit for the course. She loves math, and is incredibly good at it - so good her father keeps pressuring her to apply to MIT - but Brianna knows there's a very real possibility that she won't live to get her high school diploma, let alone a college degree.

But she also tries not to focus too much on her own mortality. She is an "illness mentor" to Ashley, a freshman who also has cystic fibrosis and looks up to Brianna to help her with everything from giving her the confidence to audition for the school play to coping with her parents' impending divorce, and good illness mentors keep the mentee's spirits up, not bring them down with thoughts of death. Then there are Brianna's best friends, Melissa and Stephanie, who provide Brianna with a daily dose of Munchkins from Dunkin' Donuts (seriously, did Dunkin' Donuts sponsor the book? Because there were lots of Munchkins eaten during this book) and constantly need Brianna's help to shepherd them through their math homework.

Over the course of her senior year, Brianna also develops special friendships with Adam, a fellow AP Calculus student who introduces Brianna to the psychedelic music of Love, a rock band their calculus teacher may or may not have been part of back in the day, and Mr. Eccles, the aforementioned calculus teacher who ponders the infinite and mortality with Brianna in the face of his own health problems.

While it is a bit of a cliche, with encouragement from her friends and her father, Brianna ultimately applies to MIT, even though she still has reservations not only about her chances of getting in, but her chances of seeing graduation day. And on top of the concerns over her MIT application and increasing amount of homework, plus helping her dad with the bookkeeping for his new side business of customizing motorcycles, Brianna can feel herself slowly getting sicker.

My biggest gripe with this book is that I feel it's going to feel incredibly dated in a few years. Will Not Another Teen Movie and Kyra Sedgewick on The Closer be as recognizable in five years as they are today? (Of course the reference to Jack Sparrow is a timeless inclusion ;-) Not every book has to be written with longevity in mind, perhaps, but some of these pop culture references felt rather forced.

What surprised me in how much I liked it was all of the math that was in the book. Brianna is constantly trying to figure out the force, speed or volume of everyday activities and items in her life. While she never seems to be able to figure them out exactly, it was a different way (for me) to look at math. And then Mr. Eccles actually had the ability to make math sound vaguely interesting. Not that I would have wanted to be in his class (I failed Advanced Algebra twice before finally passing it, and imaginary numbers ticked me off - the whole point of math is supposed to be that it's concrete, right?), but he certainly put a philosophic bent on calculus.

Additionally, let me reassure you that despite my earlier reference to Lurlene McDaniel, her books and this one really have nothing in common. Brianna has a lot of spunk to her, and while she does reference having sex as one of the things that was on her "Things to do before I die" list, she certainly isn't obsessed with having a boyfriend and being a perfect angel. She talks back to her dad, goes out to parties, and usually has a fairly pragmatic view of her death - rarely does she descend into self pity.

I also have to say, that while I saw the ending coming, and parts of it seemed a little too pat and perfect, it also had me with tears in my eyes while I was on my break at work.