Cindy (leavemetomybooks)'s Reviews > The Teacher

I've enjoyed previous books by McFadden (Never Lie, The Inmate, The Locked Door) -- so, despite REALLY disliking several of her recent books (The Housemaid's Secret, The Coworker, Ward D) -- I still really wanted to read THE TEACHER.

This one felt more like her earlier books in a way I enjoyed -- mainly that it was super fast-paced and full of characters to dislike, so despite some serious misgivings along the way, I still had it clicking along at a pleasantly-surprising two or three stars in my head, but then the epilogue happened. I always expect a McTwist or twelve, and of course won't write a spoiler here (( BUT FEEL FREE TO SCROLL DOWN IF YOU WANT THEM )), but that last "twist" was completely fucking unacceptable on many levels.

* thanks to Poisoned Pen Press for the NetGalley review copy. The Teacher publishes February 6, 2024.

(( SCROLL WAY DOWN FOR A FULL BOOK RECAP THAT IS VERY FULL OF SPOILERS ))

PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO READ A RECAP OR ANY SPOILERS DO NOT SCROLL DOWN.

ALSO : DO NOT READ THE COMMENTS BECAUSE SOME OF THE COMMENTS HAVE SPOILERY BITS AS WELL.

:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
(( KEEP SCROLLING FOR SPOILERS ))

:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
(( SPOILERS ARE COMING ))
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
(( SPOILERS AHEAD ))

(( AND, AGAIN, FOR THE KIDS IN THE BACK -- THERE IS A FULL BOOK RECAP BEHIND THE SPOILER TAG, SO IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ SPOILERS, STOP SCROLLING! AND DON'T CLICK THE SPOILER TAG! AND DON'T READ THE COMMENTS! ))

:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
(( LAST CHANCE - THERE IS A FULL BOOK RECAP WITH SPOILERS AHEAD ))
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:

(( HERE ARE THE SPOILERS ))

:
:
:
(view spoiler)[
The book opens with someone getting a lot of blisters while digging a grave. Who is digging? Who is dead? Fun start!

Then we flash back to three months earlier where we meet Eve Bennett, who is putting on a pair of black JIMMY CHOO stiletto pumps to go to her job teaching high school math (lol) and thinking about how hot her husband Nate is compared to her... and also how much she hates him because they never fuck anymore. Nate also teaches at the high school - English - and is the hottest hottie hot hot teacher at the school, based on a list made by the senior girls that another faculty member knew about and then shared with Eve?

The next chapter is from Addie's perspective. She's a junior, and everyone at school hates her because last year there were rumors she had a relationship with her math teacher, Arthur Tuttle (who is decidedly NOT a hottie hot hot teacher as he evidently resembles Santa?), while he was tutoring her and "ruined his life". Eve doesn't like Addie because Arthur is the nicest man ever and could *never* do such a terrible thing. Because that's 100% how the world works. Men who seem nice could never, ever be predators. Duh.

Addie gets bullied a bunch by a girl named Kenzie Montgomery - a popular cheerleader who is also (supposedly, but as it turns out way later is NOT) dating Addie's old BFF, Hudson Jankowski. Hudson was Addie's only friend for years - they both had drunk dads and not much money - but then Hudson got swole and started playing football and is now super popular.

Anyway, Eve is PISSED because Addie the Santa Destroyer is in her math class and she's going to have to teach her even though she has a "terrible feeling about this girl." She drowns her sorrows by going to a shoe store at the mall and thinking about stealing some LOUBOUTINS because it wouldn't be a FMcF book without the word LOUBOUTINS in it at least once, but then she doesn't steal the LOUBOUTINS and goes home and tries to bone Hot Nate, but he's not into it, so they eat some pasta instead. Everyone in this book eats A LOT of pasta.

Addie hates math and is not happy to be in mean Eve's class, but she's super jazzed because she's also in Hot Nate's English class and Hot Nate loves poetry and Addie writes poetry and he also writes poetry and he loves Edgar Allan Poe and she also loves Edgar Allan Poe and OMG!!!!!!!!! Addie writes a poem and Hot Nate LOVES it and wants to see her after class because her poem is so amazing and a lyrical masterpiece and should be published. He recruits her for the high school poetry magazine (called REFLECTIONS, dear lord), and he makes a lot of eye contact with his chocolate-bar-brown eyes.

Later that day, Eve puts on her MANOLO BLAHNIK boots and ditches Hot Nate to go to a shoe store. It is very important to know that Eve really, REALLY likes shoes. Like so much. She tries on the same LOUBOUTINS she tried on at the mall and then Jay the hot shoe salesman feels her up and they go fuck in the storeroom among the piles of shoes. As it turns out, our girl Eve has been making love (vomit) with the shoe salesman once a week for the past four months and wishes she could run away with him. Oh, Eve.

Addie and Hot Nate are at a Reflections meeting and he tells her he's entering her poem in a state competition because she is "a master of this craft, even at sixteen" and is so amazing. Addie says she's not amazing at math and Hot Nate asks if his wife is giving Addie a hard time and then says a bunch of shit about how he was dumb at math too and his wife is too logical and not a dreamer like they are... and now Addie is officially being groomed!

Then it's Eve's thirtieth birthday and she puts on her LOUIS VUITTON pumps and tries to bone Hot Nate before work, but he's not into it again. Uh oh. Later that night they go out to dinner at a (yep) pasta restaurant and have a terrible time. Nate parks really far away from the entrance to the restaurant which is a dick move because she's still wearing those LOUIS VUITTON pumps with a four-inch heel. Eve thinks she should try to connect more with Hot Nate and let him read his poems to her in a park again like he used to (all I can think about are the Kens playing guitar at the Barbies for four hours on the beach), even though she doesn't even like poetry and would rather do quadratic equations because she likes MATH, goddammit. Hot Nate gets flirted with by the waitress and then spots Addie at the restaurant and talks about Addie's lyrical mind and their mutual love of Edgar Allan Poe a bunch to his wife. Happy B-day, Eve! Addie notices Hot Nate is eating ravioli and ponders his filling selection and wishes she was eating dinner with him so he could share his thoughts about EAP poems with her (again with the Kens on the beach).

Addie and Hot Nate run into each other by the pasta restaurant bathroom (sex-ay!) and she worries that someone will see them talking and he'll end up ruined like Santa Tuttle. She tells him about her terrible day being bullied, so he gives her a special homework assignment to write an angry revenge letter to her bully and Addie thinks about what a bitch Eve is for making Hot Nate so unhappy. After the terrible birthday meal, Eve finds a pair of glossy red SAM EDELMAN sling pumps on her porch from Jay. Awww. Sex shoes!

Addie's locker gets filled with shaving cream by mean Kenzie, and during the cleanup -- in the first McTwist -- reveals that Hudson helped her kill her father. DUN DUN DUNNNNN! Her dad was a drunk, abusive asshole and they pushed him down the stairs and pretended they were at Hudson's house studying the whole time. After the murder Hudson completely stopped talking to her, but he still helps her clean her locker because he is such a nice guy.

Then Hot Nate comes along and helps clean up the last bit of locker shaving cream and offers Addie a ride home from school in his Honda Accord. Addie is digging the ride because the car is cleaner than her mom's and smells like him, and he tells her about the difficulty he experienced being a poetry-writing sixteen-year-old boy and recites the first poem he ever wrote (for his mom, at age six, which Jesus H DOES NOT COUNT AS A POEM), and she wishes they would kiss and thinks "there's something poetic about the name Nathaniel" (aaaand I am officially dead because my husband is named Nathaniel and I can't stop laughing even though this entire situation is gross AF).

ANYWAY, Eve fucks Jay again. Addie cheats on a math midterm and gets busted. Eve wears her MANOLO BLAHNIKS to school. Hot Nate takes Eve to the bone zone after school so she doesn't rat Addie out to the principal for cheating on the math test. Addie steals Kenzie's keys, lets herself into her house, and breaks a ceramic bird.

We are now 47% through this goddamn book.

Hot Nate and Addie talk again after a Reflections meeting, and he lets her know that he got her out of trouble with his mean wife. Addie hugs Hot Nate to say thank you, "But then something firm pokes me in the leg. Like a roll of toilet paper." Um. I have read more than my fair share of sex business in books and have never in my life heard a boner compared to a roll of toilet paper. I have a lot of questions.

Hot Nate apologizes to Addie for the toilet roll in his pants and then immediately launches into complaining about how his wife sucks and how he feels like he's finally connected to someone for the first time in his life. Addie leaves but can't stop thinking about that firm toilet paper pants roll (GIRL, RUN!) and comes back. Hot Nate says he's trying so hard to resist her but he just can't and then they go into the abandoned photography darkroom and make out a bunch. Hot Nate drives Addie home afterwards and tells her she's his soulmate. Then he goes home and tries to bone zone Eve but she turns him down, so now his toilet roll is blue and he is mad.

Addie writes a terrible poem about her love for Hot Nate. Then Hot Nate reads her a terrible poem that he wrote. And now I can no longer call him Hot Nate as a joke because he's officially a fucking rapist.

Addie and Sexual Predator Nate have a lot of predatory sex in the darkroom. SP Nate continues with the soulmate talk to keep Addie hooked even though "it doesn't last long, and Nathaniel says that's normal when you like somebody as much as he likes me." AAAAAAAGH. Addie starts thinking about how much better everything would be if Eve was not around anymore.

Then Addie gets her lunch dumped on the ground by Kenzie and Kenzie sees a copy of the poem SP Nate wrote. Eve is mean and won't let Addie eat a sandwich during class, so Addie hates her even more. Eve and SP Nate have a bad dinner party with their friends. Eve spots Addie lurking in the bushes outside of their house and tells SP Nate about it. Eve then tells the principal and Addie gets hauled into the office. SP Nate tells her to "deny everything" so she lies and says she wasn't there, but since she also got busted lurking outside of Santa Tuttle's house no one believes her. SP Nate starts ghosting Addie so she goes to see him in his classroom during lunch. They kiss AND EVE SEES THEM and takes a picture.

This is the part of the book where Eve talks a bunch about how none of this is Addie's fault and that she is a child and that SP Nate is a fucking creep who took advantage of her vulnerability and that it was his responsibility to keep this from happening because he is an adult. Then goes on to say the age of consent is sixteen, so he's technically NOT a rapist. Keep all of this in mind when we get to the fucking epilogue.

Eve then meets up with her fuckboy shoe salesman Jay and tells him everything. They decide she needs to leave Nate and also decide not to tell the principal. Then Eve gets wasted, confronts Nate, and kicks him out. He yells at her a bunch about shoes and leaves. He texts Addie and says he wishes Eve was dead. Addie concurs and eats a bunch of ice cream. Eve also eats a bunch of ice cream and passes out on the couch. She wakes up to a loud crash and worries someone is breaking in to steal her LOUBOUTINS because that is rational and because LOUBOUTINS haven't been mentioned for a few chapters.

omfg we're almost at the end. buckle up.

The crashing sound was Addie knocking a frying pan off of the stove. Eve and Addie confront each other and Eve says a bunch of reasonable things about SP Nate being a manipulative predator and how his feelings for a teenager are not normal and Addie flips the fuck out and hits Eve in the head with the frying pan. Three times. She calls SP Nate using Eve's phone and SP Nate comes over. Eve wakes up while Addie is getting a sheet to wrap her corpse in and SP Nate strangles her. Addie notices that Eve's body is in a different location and now she has big finger-shaped bruises on her neck, but SP Nate convinces her to help put Eve's body in the trunk and they drive her body to an abandoned pumpkin patch. We learn that SP Nate's biggest fears are death and snakes. They start digging a hole, but then SP Nate lies about getting Eve's purse from the car and abandons Addie and goes home to bed. Addie finishes burying Eve and messages Hudson to come pick her up from the middle of nowhere.

Now SP Nate is at home and weird shit keeps happening. He finds shoes in the shower and thinks about The Raven a bunch and eventually calls the police to report Eve missing. He then finds more shoes in strange places - some covered in dirt, some with smashed pumpkin on them, and then there's a bird in his kitchen so he thinks about The Raven some more. FFS.

The police visit Addie and question her a little and seem to think she killed Eve because SP Nate shows them her rage letter about Kenzie. Then Kenzie shows up at Addie's house and apologizes for being such a huge bitch and tells Addie SHE was in a relationship with SP Nate when she was FOURTEEN and knows Addie is also being abused because SP Nate gave them both the same shitty poem (which she saw in the lunchroom) and they had to break up when Addie had her Santa Tuttle scandal so that's why she hates Addie so much. The girls then go to the police station and tell them everything - and the police actually believe them, which feels like a fucking miracle.

SP Nate is home and finds a pumpkin with a bird inside in his kitchen and freaks out because THE RAVEN. The police are on their way so he goes to the pumpkin patch to check Eve’s grave and make sure she's really dead. Uh-oh... The grave is empty! Eve is alive! Turns out she unburied herself and called Jay to come get her. Jay takes her to the sexy shoe store and gives her some sensible winter non-fuck boots and hides her in his tool shed for a few days. They start pranking SP Nate with the shoes and pumpkins and birds and whatnot and when he goes to the grave they are waiting and hit him with a rock and chuck him in the hole and bury him alive. While digging, Eve remembers the poem SP Nate wrote her when she was fifteen and he was her teacher - and (McTwist!) it’s the same poem he gave Addie and Kenzie so I guess we’re all happy SP Nate is going to be dead in the pumpkin patch because he's a Serial SP with an unstoppable toilet roll.

Now we’re (FINALLY) in the epilogue.

The police stop investigating because Eve isn’t actually dead and they assume SP Nate just left town without a trace. Eve quits her job and also moves away. Hudson and Addie are friends again and Kenzie has stopped bullying Addie and no one is being sexually abused anymore, so I guess everyone is fine?

And now for the final McTwist:

IT TURNS OUT HUDSON JANKOWSKI IS THE JAY EVE WAS FUCKING IN THE SHOE STORE so she’s also a sexual predator despite her earlier CORRECT yelling at SP Nate about it being wrong to - you know - have sex with minors. For fuck’s sake. Also - from a strictly logistical standpoint… how did Hudson/Jay manage to drive to the middle of nowhere and back twice in one night to pick up both Addie and Eve? And why is he hanging out with Addie even though she tried to kill Eve? And he already knows she killed her dad? And how did he and Eve catch all of the birds? And get one to stay in a pumpkin?

The end.


EDITED 2/22/24 TO ADD/CLARIFY : Jay was not married. The baby was his little brother. The "her"/woman on the phone was Jay/Hudson's mom. And according to FMcF herself... (thanks to a commenter asking FMcF directly) -- EVE KNEW JAY/HUDSON WAS A STUDENT AT HER SCHOOL. Aaaaaaaaaagh barf blech ewwww fuuuuuuck.

(hide spoiler)]