Tampa

absolutely unhinged, yet I couldn’t get enough. Definitely a lot of trigger warnings!!!

Huge Trigger warnings for: Pedophilia, sexual assault, sexual content, sex with minors, child abuse It was really hard to rate a book about a female pedophile preying on young boys in her 8th grade English class. Celeste is a guiltless pedophile looking for the perfect boy to use and abuse before moving on to the next. Told from Celeste’s perspective, this book is incredibly uncomfortable to read, disturbing, and very gross. Celeste describes in detail her exploits with these boys and her daydreams about the boys, and her sociopathic thinking of them as just tools to meet her needs. While I did not enjoy reading this book, like many others I couldn’t put it down because I had to know how all this ended. Celeste must be based on the countless female pedophiles who were widespread in the media and the novel brings up the very relevant double standard that was pervasive at the time and in ways still is. It’s not abuse if it’s a hot woman committing the crime right? Tampa does not shy away from this or anything else, so don’t go into this without checking all content warnings! While the content was disgusting the writing made you want to continue just to see how far this all goes. And I often thought this can’t get worse, she can’t possibly get worse, but she does! I originally picked this up for its notorious reputation of being one of the most disturbing transgressive novels written by a female. I had to know if it was really that bad, and it was. Not for the faint of heart but if you can manage it, it’s worth the read.

This was a distgustingly fascinating read. Straight from the mind of a pedophile, we follow Celeste Price as she preys upon her eighth grade students. It became steadily icky, but so icky that you couldn't put it down.

First of all, Nutting is an amazing writer, the writing will cast a dark spell on you keep you turning the pages and plant you so deep inside the brain of her main character Celeste that you will feel your head spin. That said, the plot of the book is pedophilia, so it's super gross. I conceptualized reading this book as reading a horror book. It’s about a beautiful female pedophile and it’s somewhat based on the true story of Debra Lafave. It’s really graphic sexually so that makes it harder to read. Nutting doesn’t do Nabokov’s Lolita's suggestion of sex, she spells it out completely so that we can’t look away from the ugly monster inside the beautiful young woman.

But here are a few things I think make this topic make sense. This actually happens not that infrequently in real life, beautiful young women teachers get arrested for sleeping with 14-16-year-old students. There’s a pretty substantial list of them (google it) and those are just the ones that got caught; probably they don’t all get caught.

Secondly, in a lot of ways, the topic of the book is more about the inside of a sociopath’s brain. It reminded me a lot of the Ted Bundy documentary if it had been from the honest perspective of Ted Bundy. Sociopaths are scary and dangerous because they don’t have the same guardrails of human sympathy, empathy, nor do they possess a built-in moral framework. Can you be incapable of love and be truly human? As the character of Celeste is developed, we see that her only problem is not her perverse sexual desires, she fundamentally doesn't care about right and wrong or human life or anything aside from obtaining her personal desires.

[Light spoilers ahead.] Finally, there’s a lot of truth about how society lets beautiful people get away with so much more than unattractive people. The book also highlights how the legal system frequently blames the victim. Specifically, because the perpetrator is a woman, it kind of flips the script, but some things remain the same. This book, while gruesome to read, definitely made me think about a lot of problems in society.

First things first: I am not a prude. I am not close minded. I can say words like penis and vagina without blushing.

I thought I was prepared for this book, but seriously...



I get that this is supposed to be something of a character study, and in that sense, I suppose it is slightly successful because I have never felt so much disgust and hatred towards a fictional character. EVER.

I felt thoroughly nauseated for much of the book and wanted to quit reading 20 pages into it. I was on page 80 when I decided to try to pick my way through another dozen pages and ended up reading straight through to the end. I feel pretty empty, however. Most of my disgust has faded, and I feel really unsatisfied with the ending. Actually, I feel really unsatisfied with the whole thing. I feel like Celeste is just a little too over the top and one dimensional. I found myself thinking, "Do people like this really exist?" and not really knowing the answer. I understand that there are pedophiles out there but ones that don't care if people die? That's a pretty nasty person wrapped up into one convenient nasty character package. SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! When Jack's dad dies, I found her reaction to be a bit unrealistic. Like...this woman does not have even one redeemable quality? C'mon!

I just can't give it three stars because I certainly didn't like it. I am tempted to give it only one star because my nose probably has permanent creases in it from me having it wrinkled up for the past hour and a half straight.



A generous 2 stars.