Just because a book is compulsively readable does not mean it is good. I read The Teacher in about two days, and it is the trashiest trash that I have ever read. It is even worse than that one Colleen Hoover book I read. I have never read anything by Freida McFadden until now and I do not understand why any of her books would be made into movies. And just so you know, I did not buy this book myself, my sister gave it to me. I am now beginning to question her taste in books.

Spoilers ahead because I really do not think you should bother reading this crap.

The Teacher is told from the alternating perspectives of Eve, a thirty-year-old high school teacher, and Addie, a sixteen-year-old high school student. Eve’s husband, Nate, is also a teacher and they both work at the same high school. Their marriage is not going well. Nate does not seem interested in having sex with Eve anymore, so Eve, who is bitchy and incredibly unsympathetic, finds comfort in buying expensive shoes that they cannot afford and hiding them from Nate.

Addie is a pariah at school after getting a beloved math teacher fired when she was caught lurking outside of his house. Everyone assumes she had an inappropriate relationship with this teacher, even though she didn’t. Her best friend, Hudson, no longer has anything to do with her after they accidentally killed Addie’s mean drunk father by pushing him down the stairs.

Addie is in Eve’s math class, and Eve can’t stand her, not only for getting her friend fired, but also because Addie is really dumb at math. Addie is also in Nate’s English class, but he is nice and encouraging towards her. Now how on to your seats people, because the book goes off the rails when Nate grooms Addie into having a sexual relationship with him. Yes, that’s right, Nate is a pedophile. I have read a novel about pedophilia before (My Dark Vanessa), so as uncomfortable as it is to read about pedophilia, I am okay with reading about it so long as it is treated sensitively, and that’s the problem with The Teacher, it does not treat its subject matter sensitively at all. The novel devolves into this tawdry thriller where Addie thinks that she and Nate are soulmates and they would be together if his horrible wife wasn’t in the way. Seriously, the way McFadden has written Addie’s narration makes her seem like she is twelve or thirteen, not sixteen.

Eve eventually figures out what is going on between Nate and Addie and is naturally appalled and surprisingly shows some sympathy towards Addie, because, in a twist that you can see coming from miles away, it turns out that Eve was groomed by Nate as a teenager when he was her English teacher. (No wonder Nate doesn’t want to have sex with his wife anymore; she got too old for him.) Eve wants to spare herself and Addie from the unwanted attention they will get when it is revealed that Nate is a fucking pervert, so Eve tells Nate to leave Addie alone, quit his job and leave town. When Addie finds out Nate is leaving, she becomes unhinged and kills Eve (or at least thinks she kills Eve) so that she can be with her man. Ugh.

But buckle up people because it gets even better. Throughout the novel, Eve hooks up with her lover, Jay, a shoe salesperson (lol), but in the novel’s epilogue it is revealed that Addie’s friend Hudson’s nickname is Jay and he works at a shoe store!!??!! Yes, that’s right, the victim of child predation has herself become a child predator. If Freida McFadden was a better writer, she might have written an interesting psychological story about the effects of pedophilia on its victims, but instead she went for shock and awe, and judging by some of the reviews on Goodreads, it worked. Like, wtf people?

This book belongs in the trash, but I can’t bring myself to throw out a book, so it’s getting donated instead.