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A review by radella_hardwick
The Teacher by Katerina Diamond
dark
tense
3.25
This book is categorised as the first Imogen Grey novel but she's barely a tertiary POV. Her partner is the main police protagonist and we spend way more time with the victims than either of them.
My biggest problem with this book is how grotesquely, glorifyingly detailed both the violence and the sex (both consensual and rape) are.
My second biggest problem is the reason I picked this out of the mysteries on offer: it's set in Exeter, around the time I was a student there. My problem is that it doesn't feel like Exeter, at all. The occasional street name is real but the school where the story starts isn't real, the museum where a majority of the action takes place doesn't exist and the campuses aren't described as they really are or, more to point, were when the book is set. The 'then' part of Abi's story takes place during my own first or second year at the uni (going by the publication date) and the main campus was a building site during those two years. Also, there's no way anyone outside of her own tutor group, let alone her course, would recognise her as the university is too big. Nor do I believe that she would recognise the dean, unless she went out of her way to look him up on the website. Plus, the book describes Pinhoe as being a village outside Exeter, when it has been fully encapsulated by the city since the 1960s.
All in all, the setting is complete fantasy, so why not set your book in a city with a made-up name like Christie used to do?
My biggest problem with this book is how grotesquely, glorifyingly detailed both the violence and the sex (both consensual and rape) are.
My second biggest problem is the reason I picked this out of the mysteries on offer: it's set in Exeter, around the time I was a student there. My problem is that it doesn't feel like Exeter, at all. The occasional street name is real but the school where the story starts isn't real, the museum where a majority of the action takes place doesn't exist and the campuses aren't described as they really are or, more to point, were when the book is set. The 'then' part of Abi's story takes place during my own first or second year at the uni (going by the publication date) and the main campus was a building site during those two years. Also, there's no way anyone outside of her own tutor group, let alone her course, would recognise her as the university is too big. Nor do I believe that she would recognise the dean, unless she went out of her way to look him up on the website. Plus, the book describes Pinhoe as being a village outside Exeter, when it has been fully encapsulated by the city since the 1960s.
All in all, the setting is complete fantasy, so why not set your book in a city with a made-up name like Christie used to do?
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Violence, Gun violence, Sexual violence, and Torture