Review by erinmg - The Teacher

erinmg 's review for:

The Teacher by Freida McFadden

2.0

I’ve given McFadden’s books several tries now and some of them are okay, but this one was by far the worst I’ve read. Firstly, the dialogue is horrible and so cringey. Nobody talks like that, and she repeats things over and over as if the reader isn’t smart enough to understand or remember certain details. I get that some of that information is important and comes back later, but it’s honestly to the point where it’s annoying. A normal person will understand without having to be told the same thing five times over. Not only this, but the dialogue for teenagers in the story is horrible and was obviously written with no knowledge of how teenagers talk. For instance, I rarely hear teens say “frickin” (just drop the f-bomb, I know they certainly do) or “gazillion”. Trying to make stories more reader friendly draws away from the realistic nature of the characters in my opinion.

Secondly, this story made me literally sick to my stomach. I almost DNF’d at the halfway mark because the descriptions of

Addie and Nate’s romantic/sexual conversations and interactions were horrifying. She is 16 and he is 40, and there was way too much detail. How can you write that and not feel like being sick? I had to skip several sections because of how nauseous I felt hearing it.

I understand what she was trying to do, but I felt like it could’ve been done differently. Major TW so definitely check that if you’re planning to read.

Finally, I am usually able to say that the big twist at the end that is iconic for McFadden’s books is a redeeming factor, but this one fell majorly flat.

I could tell from early on that Eve was not dead and was going to come back and exact revenge on Nate. The only twist that actually got me was in the last chapter when it’s revealed that Jay is actually Hudson. Though it surprised me, it actually kind of ruined it for me because now both Nate and Eve are pedophiles. I was ready to accept her redemption arc until then, but now everyone in the story turned out to be horrible.

All in all, I would definitely not recommend this one due to content and overall bad writing/characters. Of all McFadden’s books, this one has been the final straw and I likely won’t read her books any more.

Content Warnings