Boy Toy

In BOY TOY, author Barry Lyga takes readers on an incredible journey into a world that, for some, like main character Josh Mendel, is all too real. Josh's life was changed at age twelve when his teacher took the role of educator far beyond the limits of acceptable behavior. Lyga's story does not cut corners or mince words. He is straightforward and direct in telling Josh's story. His graphic descriptions may have earned him criticism, but they have also made his story a powerful one. Josh Mendel loves baseball. He is a wiz at math. His best friend, Zik, seems to be the one with the rocky home life and all the problems, but not for long. Mrs. Evelyn Sherman is the new history teacher recently transferred from the local high school to the middle school. She is drop-dead gorgeous. All the boys probably find it a bit embarrassing to stand up and leave the classroom some days. Josh certainly does. Josh's involvement with Mrs. Sherman begins when she praises his writing and asks him to help her with a project for her graduate class. Honored and excited, Josh is eager to help. Problems at home make staying after school, and later actually going home with Mrs. Sherman, a convenience for Josh and his parents. He begins spending more and more time with her even after her project is complete. At first, being in Mrs. Sherman's apartment everyday after school is exciting, because Josh gets to play unlimited video games, drink Coke, and hang out with an attentive, beautiful woman. His time in the apartment becomes even more fascinating when Mrs. Sherman begins inviting him to help her cook dinner and sip wine with her. Then kisses begin - tentative and then passionate. The passion moves from petting to full-on sexual experimentation. Josh is addicted. There are feelings of guilt, but those feelings are outweighed by the incredible physical pleasure Mrs. Sherman offers. Life is spiraling out of control. The world comes crashing down when Josh finds himself playing spin the bottle with Rachel. He and Rachel have been friends on the baseball field for as long as he can remember, but when Josh's newfound experience turns the innocent teenage game too sexually explicit, Rachel runs screaming to her parents. The "game" is over, and Josh's secret is about to come out in the open. BOY TOY is not a short romp between the sheets. In fact, it has raised many eyebrows in the world of YA literature. Readers will see exactly what went on with Mrs. Sherman, but they will also see deeply into the world of a young man trying to continue with life, make amends to his friends, and make plans for his future. It has a strong, powerful story to tell, and it tells that story well. Reviewed by: Sally Kruger, aka "Readingjunky"

I give this book 5 stars for the excellent writing and unexpectedly respectful way Barry Lyga handles the sexual molestation scenario. I wondered whether this book would be triggering, but through skillful writing technique, it skirts the sexual crime just enough to yield a comfortable read. I couldn't follow the baseball stuff. But that's just me. It rounds out Josh's and Rachel's characters, and links all 4 of the youths. Besides, baseball's just plain normal.

Review: I used to work for a local newspaper, and one of my tasks was typing up the weekly police blotter. Most of the contents of the blotter were your run-of-the-mill car accidents, petty theft, or disorderly conduct, but every now and then a report of child molestation would come across my desk. The reports were sickening, and each time I typed up the details of the incident I would ask myself a) how someone could be twisted enough to engage in a sexual relationship with a child and b) how that relationship had come about in the first place. Barry Lyga explores the answers to those questions, and more, in Boy Toy. The story centers on Josh Mendel, a senior in high school who, five years earlier, was involved in a full-blown affair with his seventh-grade history teacher. The book goes back and forth between the present and the past, taking you through the life of the affair from beginning to end and showing the impact it has on Josh’s life five years after the fact. The amazing thing about Boy Toy is that even though it’s about a very heavy subject, it’s still compelling. I honestly could not stop reading it – I switched from my small purse to my jumbo diaper bag of a purse just so I could carry Boy Toy with me everywhere I went. I wanted to hear Josh’s story. I wanted to understand. How on earth did a 12-year-old boy end up having sex with his teacher? What did the teacher see in him? How was their relationship discovered? What were the implications for Josh later, as a teenager? What’s brilliant about Lyga’s writing is that he makes you look at things in ways you’d never expect. For one thing, I never would have anticipated that I would sympathize with Eve, the woman who molested Josh. This isn’t to say I think what she does is right – there’s no doubt that it is twisted and wrong and incredibly screwed up. Rather, what I’m trying to say is that Eve is more than just your cardboard villain. She seems like a real person, with complicated motivations and clear strengths as well as clear weaknesses. She seems to truly care about Josh in her own messed up way, taking him on dates, cooking for him, cheering him on at his baseball games, etc. Where it all goes wrong is in the progression of their relationship from platonic to physical. Lyga has caught some flack for the intensity of the sex scenes in Boy Toy. Some readers argue that the scenes are gratuitous and inappropriate, focusing on feelings of excitement and eroticism rather than trauma or violation. I disagree with those readers wholeheartedly; I think the fact that the sex scenes are so hot and heavy is part of what makes the book successful. Before you start calling me a sick creep, let me explain. I do find it disturbing and twisted that Josh’s teacher seduced him, but I can’t deny that if the scenes were written between two consenting adults rather than a teacher and underage student, they’d be incredibly arousing. Reading the details of Josh’s sexual encounters triggered warring emotions of disgust, excitement, and shame, which is exactly what Josh feels when he thinks back to his experiences with his teacher. It put me in Josh’s shoes and helped me realize just how confused and conflicted he must have felt. Lyga’s ability to make his readers see things from the point of view of his characters is one of his many gifts as a writer. It’s scary how easy it is to understand why Eve falls for Josh. He’s different from the other kids at his school, mature for his age, precocious, thoughtful. Even at 12 he is almost as tall as Eve herself. He’s capable of holding meaningful conversations with her, of understanding her humor and making her laugh in return. Josh at 18, the age he is when recounting the events of the book, is no less amazing. He’s insanely smart, with a nearly photographic memory and the ability to calculate the square root of 52 or the product of 12 and 144 in his head. He’s enthralled by the stars and planets. He dedicates himself to working hard at all that he does, whether in the classroom or on the baseball diamond, where he’s a star hitter. It’s incredibly fascinating to watch Josh try to come to terms with what happened to him all those years ago, to witness him trying to deal with the guilt and the embarrassment of knowing that everyone in his town knows all the details of his sex life. He’s got a great voice, with a compelling blend of attitude and self-consciousness. I developed a bit of a book crush on him, and he’ll go down in my mind as one of my all-time favorite characters. Barry Lyga is an author who never disappoints me. He always presents a unique perspective, troubled but enthralling characters, and a plot that keeps you interested from start to finish. I strongly encourage you to go out and read Boy Toy. I know I’ll be revisiting it over and over again. This review can also be found on my blog, http://AngelasLibrary.com.

This story opens with a list. `Ten Things I Learned at the Age of Twelve'. It's a quirky little list that could have been created by any twelve-year-old boy. Until you get to the last item on the list. #10 is both shocking and disturbing. #10 brings the reader immediately into the heart of this earth-shattering story. After the list, Boy Toy opens on the remembrance of the narrator Josh Mendel's 13th birthday party. Josh has already lived through sexual abuse at the hands of one of his female teachers, Mrs. Sherman. What the reader is given to understand is that everybody else knows what has happened to Josh, but that Josh himself is not very clear on the subject. What goes wildly wrong in the first chapter is the result of Josh's lack of understanding. When he finds himself in the basement closet of his friend, Rachel, Josh really has no idea what is appropriate and what is inappropriate where thirteen-year-old relationships are concerned. Mrs. Sherman took all understanding away from Josh the day she started sexually abusing him. This is a story of a boy coming back from sexual abuse. It is an achingly beautiful read and it is a story well told. Looking into this boy's story gives readers an understanding of the difficulties faced by victims of molestation. Lyga does an excellent job showing the skewed understanding and mixed emotions Josh deals with as a result of his abuse. As Josh narrates the story, he is actually eighteen. He's getting ready to finish high school and he carries a huge burden. He feels guilty for destroying his teacher's life...for wrecking her marriage, for causing her to lose her teacher's career and end up in jail. What he doesn't realize is that none of it is his fault. His feeling are a direct result of the huge trauma he underwent while the abuse was happening. When Josh's teacher is released from prison, he feels her presence everywhere. He's just waiting to come face to face with her. His fear and guilt is palpable...but so is the sense that he wants to see her. It is around the same time that Rachel, his friend from the 13th birthday party fiasco, comes back for another round. Rachel wants Josh. I'm not sure if this relationship is what Lyga intended...it's rather sketchy to me. Rachel, in my opinion, is abrasive and pushy. Quite frankly, I could see her actions actually re-traumatizing Josh, if nothing else. This was the part of the story that stood out as iffy to me...and my reason for reluctantly giving it four stars instead of five. Josh's relationship with his best friend, Zik, was extremely well played. Zik was constantly there for Josh...but the whole time there was a wall between them. We shall not talk of this became such a huge barrier that it became something else for Josh to feel guilty about. The way the relationship was played out was deeply satisfying. I readily admit to being totally conflicted by this story. If not for the way Rachel was portrayed, it would have been a 5-star read for me. I just don't understand the motivation behind having Rachel being so forceful with Josh. Maybe it was intentional, I don't know. I can't pretend to understand the author's reasonings. I do know that should you choose to read Boy Toy, you'll love it. It's well written and it's a skilful look into a topic that is often taboo. I applaud Lyga for tackling it...and for doing it justice. I do highly recommend Boy Toy--Rachel objections aside. Expectation: Lyga did an amazing job representing Josh's conflicted feelings for Eve (Mrs. Sherman). Josh's emotional rollercoaster was so well played, as were his struggle with right and wrong and the confusion he experienced regarding guilt and blame/aggressor and victim. This book far exceeded my expectations. A great read!

In the week before writing this review I have read three of Lyga's novels. Each looks at a different element of human nature and is about a man struggling to understand himself, of a boy struggling to become a man. Each was an incredible read. But this one was so dark, so gritty, that a few times I had to step back and put the book down. It was so intense that I needed a break from the story. Josh Mendel is eighteen, a senior at South Brock High in Brookdale. He is an incredible hitter in baseball, he has a short fuse, and when he was 12 and 13 he was seduced by his history teacher Evelyn 'Eve' Sherman. His name was never in the papers but everyone in this small town knows his secret. Just as he thought he was a few weeks from graduation and leaving town to pursue baseball and mathematics, his life gets turned upside down again. Rachel, one of his best friends growing up, whom he assaulted, is back in his life and determined they need to work things out. Eve has gotten out of jail and he is worried he will run into her around every corner. He punches out his baseball coach and serves a three day suspension. Life is pretty topsy-turvy for Josh right now and he doesn't even know the half of it. But what is the truth about what happened, and what people know or think they know? Barry Lyga has probed the depths of what abuse does to a person's mind and psyche. He has examined the results of systematic progressive abuse and how it ensnares the victim and confuses the victim. He also shows the lasting impact that something like this can have, even after years of therapy. I have known a number of survivors and Lyga does an incredible job of capturing that experience but also creating a story with hope and light at the end of the tunnel. The book was a little disturbing to read, but only because of Lyga's penetrating insight and also his compassion in presenting such a story. Very well done!

I did enjoy this story and feel like the situation of a 12 year old boy being molested by a female teacher was well written and handled well as well as offered insights as to how a situation like that could happen (since we often see stories about male teachers to female students but not the reversal.. That being said, I do not understand baseball so I felt this book got way too detailed and had some unnecessary exposition when it came to baseball. Some of the baseball stuff was necesand well written (I enjoyed the big game at the end ) but there were others that was just too exposition heavy (even a whole chapter toward the beginning). I also hated Rachel's character and felt she treated him in a toxic way (tricking and manipulating him into dates and forcing him to open up when he didn't feel ready and forcing him to do things he didn't want. Also got bothered by the sexual content but most was necessary to the story.