Emily's Book Reviews

Okay, I have to be honest: this book gave me MAJOR ick. I just want to get through this plot summary so I can get to the review. Bring your barf bags, people.

Trigger Warnings: SA, grooming, murder, teacher/student relationships.

Spoilers ahead!

Like usual, Freida drew me in right away. The first line of the book is “Digging a grave is hard work.” Okay, so right from the start, we know someone is going to die…or at least be buried.

This book has three main characters – Eve, a math teacher. Nate, an English teacher who is married to Eve. And Addie, a student with a troubled history.

We mainly get Eve and Addie’s point of view. Eve starts us off and its immediately clear that Eve and Nate do not have a happy marriage. Apparently, they used to be happy, but something happened along the way that changed things. Eve – a shoe addict – is a very strict teacher. If you get math, she likes you. If you don’t, she doesn’t.

The story starts on the first day of school. Addie is dreading going in because of an incident that took place last year. We don’t get many details right off the bat, but we find out Addie’s dad, an addict, died and during her coping process, she developed a close relationship with another math teacher named Arthur Tuttle. He’s described as looking like Santa Claus. Word around the school is that he and Addie had an “inappropriate” relationship, but Addie says nothing happened between them. Throughout all of the drama in Addie’s life, her best friend, Hudson, just stops talking to her, and we’re not really told why.

Nate is known as the hot teacher around school. Every woman Eve talks to gushes about how hot her husband is and how lucky she is to be married to him. She wonders if he might be cheating on her, especially after she sees the new French teacher flirting with him, and she seems upset by this fact, even though she clearly doesn’t love her husband.

Addie and Nate immediately bond in his English class over their shared love of Poe. Meanwhile, Eve goes to a shoe store and attempts to pilfer a pair of high heels, but a clerk saves her from being taken in by the cops. Turns out, she’s the one having an affair with the clerk at the shoe store named Jay. It’s been happening for a while, and they allude to the fact that he has a family at home and that he needs to go “help with the baby.” Remember that detail.

Addie joins the poetry magazine at the request of Nate, and it’s clear she has a school girl crush on him. This crush helps her endure the bullying from Kenzie, the popular mean girl at school. Kenzie appears to be dating Hudson, much to Addie’s dismay.

Truth bomb: Addie was never “with” Arthur Tuttle – he was merely trying to help her get through some tough stuff with her family, but she became a little obsessed. She went to his house one night while Art and his wife were eating dinner and she got caught sneaking away. We learn throughout the book that Addie has a habit of trying to sneak into people’s houses. She does this to Kenzie, too.

The reason that Addie and Hudson don’t talk anymore has nothing to do with Mr. Tuttle. We find out what happened to Addie’s father. He came home drunk and started verbally berating Addie in front of Hudson. Hudson started yelling back. Her father shoved Hudson, so Addie shoved him back. Right down the stairs. It wasn’t intentional, but her father dies from the fall. They don’t call the cops, and Addie forces Hudson to make a run for it to his house. Addie’s mother finds her father a few hours later, and the police assume he was so drunk he fell down the stairs. But Hudson is unable to move past this and stops talking to Addie.

Nate and Eve start having *relations* again, which coincidentally lines up with Nate and Addie growing closer.

Addie breaks into Kenzie’s house by stealing her key. It was kind of pointless, because she doesn’t really do anything but go through Kenzie’s stuff.

Nate and Addie start having an affair. I won’t put too many details because it’s absolutely disgusting, but she hugs him to thank him for helping her, and then the next think you know, their kissing. It’s all, “I have nothing in common with my wife,” and, “I can’t resist you.”

He writes her a poem. Some disgusting bull that starts with, “Life nearly passed me by. Then she, young and alive…” He truly is a master of manipulation. They start meeting in the photography dark room. He pushes her into doing something she isn’t ready for after promising they could take it slow. It’s disgusting.

But now Addie is actually OBSESSED with Nate and Eve catches Addie outside their house, hiding in the bushes. And then Eve catches Nate and Addie kissing in his classroom. Eve tells Nate to end it and to resign, and he agrees to save his career. But as he breaks it off with Addie over text, he says, “If she were dead, I could still keep my job, and we could still be together.”

After a brief verbal confrontation after Addie sneaks into Eve’s house, Addie smacks Eve over the head with a frying pan. And once Eve’s unconscious, Addie hits her a few more times for good measure. Then she calls Nate on Eve’s phone and is like, “So remember how you said that we could still be together if Eve was dead? Surprise!”…Okay, she didn’t say that exactly, but close enough.

So they decide they’re gonna hide the body. Nate sends Addie out in Eve’s car to go buy a train ticket so they can say Eve left town. But surprise!! Eve is alive and she wakes up on her kitchen floor. Nate realizes she isn’t dead and decides to finish the job. He strangles Eve to death.

When Addie comes back, she sees the bruises on Eve’s neck, but Nate says they were there earlier and it’s nothing to worry about. He convinces Addie that they shouldn’t call the police.

Perspective switch to Nate. They’re going to bury the body. Addie is once again driving Eve’s car. They leave it at the train station, and Nate considers driving off without her, but he “needs her for the next part.” So basically, he and Addie did a hole to bury Eve, with Nate gaslighting her every inch of the way. Nate says he forgot to grab Eve’s purse from the trunk and runs to the car to get it.

Oh, and he leaves Addie behind.

After searching for Nate for hours, Addie realizes what he’s done and calls Hudson to come pick her up.

The next morning, Nate is happy that his wife is dead…until he finds a pair of Eve’s shoes in the shower. And then he thinks he hears someone in the house. But because Nate thinks he’s God, he ignores it and goes to grade some papers. You know, before he calls the police.

Nate plays the worried husband who hasn’t heard from his wife. The police ask if there’s anyone who would have wanted to hurt Eve. And Nate immediately throws Addie under the bus.

While the police are investigating, they find another pair of Eve’s shoes in the kitchen, this pair covered in dirt. Kinda like she was buried in them or something.

The police come to Addie’s house, and she denies everything, just like gaslighting Nate told her to. She quickly realizes Nate has set her up, and begins to believe that Nate is capable of murder.

Thankfully, the police in this book are smart. After talking to the principal at the school, they realize that Nate hasn’t been entirely truthful about his relationship with Addie. The police question Addie again, but this time, it’s obvious they know Nate has more to do with Eve’s death than anyone else. And the detective makes sure Addie understands that if she and Nate had a relationship, that Nate was at fault because he took advantage of a young girl.

After school, Kenzie comes to visit Addie. She apologizes for being mean, and then says she knows about Nate and Addie. And then Kenzie drops another twist: Kenzie knew about Nate and Addie when she saw the poem in Addie’s notebook that Nate “wrote for her.” Because Nate wrote the same poem for Kenzie. Turns out, Addie wasn’t the first student Nate took advantage of, and had been sleeping with Kenzie as well.

Kenzie and Addie decide to go to the police together to turn Nate the Scumbag in. The detective sends a car for Nate, but he’s losing his mind at this point. He keeps finding Eve’s shoes everywhere and thinks someone knows the truth and is taunting him.

Turns out, both Nate and Addie suck at killing people. Eve is alive, and she enlists Jay’s help in tormenting Nate. When Nate shows up to Eve’s makeshift grave to confirm she’s dead, Nate gets knocked out. Once he comes to, he tries to talk his way out of it. Jay helps Eve throw Nate in the same shallow grave he buried her in, and she returns the favor of burying him alive.

And as she does, she recites the poem that Nate wrote for her years ago, when she was just 15 years old and he was the new, fresh out of college English teacher at her school: “Life nearly passed me by. Then she, young and alive…”

In the epilogue, Addie and Hudson are now happily dating. We learn that Nate had a lot of victims over the years, starting with Eve. We get a short scene of Hudson messing around with his friends before he rides off with Addie before his shift at the shoe store starts. And his friends don’t call him Hudson.

They call him Jay.

My Review

Like I said, this one gave me the creeps. Nate is a literal piece of human garbage, and while I would have liked to seen him put on trial for his crimes, I can’t say I’m sad he’s no longer being a massive creep.

I hated Eve at the start of the book, but felt bad for her when I realized she was Nate’s first victims. I remember being shocked before the epilogue at how my opinion of her had changed so drastically.

Eve is a sad case of a victim becoming a predator. While I’m not sure if she’s a serial predator like our friend Nate, she’s still is taking advantage of her position.

I wouldn’t necessarily say I liked Addie, but she was by far the least monstrous character in this book, and that’s saying something. She’s a young girl who needs mental help. She was inadvertently responsible for her father’s death, and I think that helped her realize she could be capable of it if she wanted to be. And I don’t think she meant to kill Eve – she didn’t – but she’s so mentally unstable that I don’t see her having a healthy future without some counseling.

I did find it hilarious how smart Nate thought he was when setting up Addie. He thought he was a bond villain, but instead, he was Mojo Jojo from the Powerpuff Girls. “Yeah, I’ve only been having relationships with like 8 girls in this school, but none of them would dare turn me in because I’m their soulmate.” Lol, sure Jan.

I also liked that the cops weren’t idiots in this. They did their jobs and figured out who the real villain was. The recognized quickly that Nate was a predator and, even though it would haven been satisfying to see him thrown in jail, this ending was satisfying enough.

I’d give this one three stars. I liked it, but probably won’t re-read it anytime soon because it made me so uncomfortable. But it was another page-turner by Freida, which is really what I rely on her for.