The Teacher

The Teacher 

The Teacher is the latest novel to be checked off my to be read list. My wife sent this one to me and asked if we could read it. I love that both my husband and my wife are such avid readers, and we get to share that together! 

My husband and I are listening to Lord of the Rings right now together too. So sharing books and listening and reading together is such a great bonding activity. 

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Have you read The Teacher? Come on in and let me tell you about it! 

About The Teacher 

Lesson #1: Trust no one.

Eve has a good life. She wakes up each day, kisses her husband Nate, and heads off to teach math at the local high school. All is as it should be. Except…

Last year, Caseham High was rocked by a scandal involving a student-teacher affair, with one student, Addie, at its center. But Eve knows there is far more to these ugly rumors than meets the eye.

Addie can’t be trusted. She lies. She hurts people. She destroys lives. At least, that’s what everyone says. 

But nobody knows the real Addie. Nobody knows the secrets that could destroy her. And Addie will do anything to keep it quiet… 

Thoughts on The Teacher 

I’m going to start with the warning that there will be some spoilers in this review, because I don’t feel I can adequately express my opinion without them on this one. So if you don’t want spoilers, you should stop reading right here. 

The prologue sucked me in! It starts with someone digging a grave. Who? No idea. Who is the grave for? Again, no clue. But I want to know! 

The prologue to this story was amazing. It sucked me straight in, and I was sure it was going to live up to the category of thriller with that intro. I wish I could say the rest of the book was equally as great. But it isn’t. It is mundane, tedious, and I contemplated if I should finish it or just slit my throat so I didn’t have to finish it. 

Okay, that might be a bit dramatic, but this book just didn’t live up to the hype that the prologue created, and I found that really disappointing. The only saving grace to The Teacher is the fact the chapters were short, so it was a pretty fast read. 

Let’s start with Eve’s obsession with designer shoes. I stopped counting the number of pages dedicated to her love affair with shoes and how obsessed she is. To the point of contemplating actually stealing shoes because she doesn’t want her husband to find out about them. Common sense says if he’s the one paying the credit card bills, he’s going to notice, but that is glossed over in the book. She gets them as gifts from her lover, who coincidentally works in a shoe store. She prays her husband won’t notice those either. It only takes shoes to get Eve on her back, apparently. 

“When I hear the front door opening, I’ve been in the process of trying on all my shoes. Yes, all of them. I don’t know why, but there’s something comforting about a fashion show for my feet. Whenever I’m feeling bad about something, I go straight to my shoes. That’s something Nate could never understand, but Jay gets it.” 

Frieda McFadden, The Teacher

Nate, Eve’s husband, is a sexual predator, and I find it appalling. Although, I just read Destroying Their God, so reading about even a fictional sexual predator just makes my stomach turn and want to throw up, and it almost became a do not finish for me because of this. Note to self, do not read more than one book in a row with sexual predators in them. 

Nate’s classic grooming behaviors are gross, and he crosses so many lines, it is insane. His defending Addie to Eve is also quite suspicious. He also sets Addie up to take the fall for his crimes, because he’s always thinking ahead and looking out for himself. 

Life nearly passed me by

Then she

You and alive 

With smooth hands

And pink cheeks

Showed me myself 

Took away my breath 

With cherry-red lips 

Gave me life once again 

Frieda McFadden, The Teacher

Addie is her own class of drama and problems. Eve hates Addie because she got another teacher fired the previous year. This teacher resembled Santa Claus and could absolutely never hurt or abuse anyone, under any circumstances. Because looking like Santa Claus makes a man a good person. Okay, sure. Ted Bundy looked like the guy next door, too. 

Addie also has really creepy stalker tendencies, going to teacher’s homes, lurking outside, watching them, then breaking into their homes. Her and her best friend, Hudson, kill her father a year or two earlier as well, so they are hiding that fact. 

The fact Nate is a sexual predator comes to light, and it all goes downhill from there. Eve wants a divorce, they somehow decide to kill each other. Well, Nate decides to kill Eve, and has Addie help. But he fails. Which then lets Eve kill him instead. I guess the moral of that part is, if you’re going to kill someone, make damn sure you actually succeed. 

Eve manages to escape, and calls Jay, her shoe selling lover. Now, what royally pisses me off here is that “Jay” is actually Hudson. His full name is Hudson Jankowski, and some people call him Jay. So the connection isn’t made immediately by the reader. But this makes both Nate and Eve sexual predators. Frieda McFadden somehow completely glosses over the fact there is no possible way Eve would not recognize Hudson/Jay from school and not know he’s still a minor. 

We’ve also completely glossed over the fact Eve sustained pretty decent head injuries from when Addie beat her with a cast iron frying pan, and caused heavy bleeding. But she’s somehow magically fine, doesn’t go to the hospital, and the police do no forensic testing in the house, despite finding a single shoe in the kitchen when taking the original report. Makes perfect sense. 

Final Thoughts on The Teacher 

I hate this book, like literally hate it. I want a refund on the time spent reading it. I could ignore the plot holes and overlook them fairly easily. The shoe obsession could even be overlooked here, if it weren’t for the overall plot. What I can’t ignore here is any book, fictional or not, glorifying sexual predators, especially when it comes to children.  

I cannot understand, for the life of me, why anyone is raving about The Teacher by Frieda McFadden. No one with common sense or intelligence would support a book glorifying sexual predators who prey on children. Teachers preying on kids to sexually abuse them does not qualify as a thriller. It just doesn’t, and the fact Frieda McFadden tried to turn it into a thriller just makes me want to throw up. 

I’m rating it at one star, because it was horrible. I’m angry, and I want a refund on the time spent reading it. This is my first Frieda McFadden book, and I’m not sure if it is my last or not, but it will be a very long time before I try another of her books.

Normally I always encourage my readers and followers to read books, even when I don’t like them, to form their own opinions. This is one I recommend you skip and go for something else. I just can’t tell you to read it. 

Discussion 

Have you read The Teacher or any other writing from author Frieda McFadden? Are you a fan? Let me know your thoughts in the comments! 

About the Author 

#1 New York Times, Amazon Charts, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Sunday Times, and Publisher’s Weekly bestselling author Freida McFadden is a practicing physician specializing in brain injury who has penned multiple bestselling psychological thrillers and medical humor novels. 

Freida’s work has been selected as one of Amazon Editors’ best books of the year, she is the winner of the International Thriller Writers Award for best paperback, and she is a Goodreads Choice Award winner. Her novels have been translated into over 30 languages.

​ Freida lives with her family and black cat in a centuries-old three-story home overlooking the ocean, with staircases that creak and moan with each step, and nobody could hear you if you scream. Unless you scream really loudly, maybe. 

Purchasing ​​The Teacher 

If you are interested in buying the paperback version of The Teacher, click here.

Click here for the Kindle version.

Click here for my favorite Kindle I currently own.

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