Review: Unteachable – Leah Raeder

BY LEAH RAEDER

An edgy, sexy USA TODAY bestseller about falling for the one person you can’t have.

Maise O’Malley just turned eighteen, but she’s felt like a grown-up her entire life. The summer before senior year, she has plans: get into a great film school, convince her mom to go into rehab, and absolutely do not, under any circumstances, screw up her own future.

But life has a way of throwing her plans into free-fall.

When Maise meets Evan at a carnival one night, their chemistry is immediate, intense, and short-lived. Which is exactly how she likes it: no strings. But afterward, she can’t get Evan out of her head. He’s taught her that a hookup can be something more. It can be an unexpected connection with someone who truly understands her. Someone who sees beyond her bravado to the scared but strong girl inside.

That someone turns out to be her new film class teacher, Mr. Evan Wilke.

Maise and Evan resolve to keep their hands off each other, but the attraction is too much to bear. Together, they’re real and genuine; apart, they’re just actors playing their parts for everyone else. And their masks are slipping. People start to notice. Rumors fly. When the truth comes to light in a shocking way, they may learn they were just playing parts for each other, too.

Smart, sexy, and provocative, Unteachable is about what happens when a love story goes off-script.

Series:
Release Date: March 24th 2014
Publisher: Atria
Source: NetGalley
Reviewer: Joelle
Rating:

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Reviewer’s Thoughts

Where do I start? A student having an affair with a teacher is wrong on many levles….Being a high school teacher myself, I cannot imagine an instance in which I would indulge in this behavior. That being said, I do know it happens–probably more often than I care to think about. I had mixed feelings throughout the entirity of  Unteachable by Leah Raeder.

On the one hand, I was sympathetic to Maise. Here she is, rasing herself, no guidance, no limits, so it’s not really a surprise that she makes decisions that are dangerous and harmful to her. While she is 18, she is still a teenager and prone to impulsivity.

This is the point at which I blame Evan, the “adult”, in the relationship. He should know better and have more self-control. What kind of idiot involves himself with a student? Now this is where more mixed feelings come in because Maise is quite the vixen–playing the Lolita role to a tee. She lies about her age, she has “experience” with older men, etc. Poor Evan…NOT!

They are both to blame for their discretions. For the majority of the book I was thinking, “what a mess this whole situation is…”, but I really started to care about each of the characters and at times was even starting to accept their relationship as ok. While the ending probably wasn’t very realistic, I was happy with the resolution. I would like to read a “where are they now” type of story about Maise and Evan about 10 years down the road to see how things are going.

Leah Raeder is a writer and unabashed nerd. Aside from reading her brains out, she enjoys graphic design, video games, fine whiskey, and the art of self-deprecation. She lives with her very own manic pixie dream boy in Chicago. Visit her at LeahRaeder.com.

“Lyrical, vivid, and poignant, Unteachable is one of the best forbidden romances I’ve ever read,”

— Lauren Blakely, New York Times bestselling author

Find Leah online:

http://www.leahraeder.com/

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