Unteachable by Leah Raeder/Elliot Wake
Publication date: March 24th, 2014
Publisher: Atria Unbound
Pages: 320
Synopsis (according to Goodreads):
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 afterwards, 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.
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Review:
I received an e-copy of this book from the publisher on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
With Leah Raeder's second book, Black Iris, coming out soon I decided that it was a little unfair of me to desire it when I had not even read the first book he wrote. Out of that guilt came the determination to try my hand at his writing before I started coveting his second piece of work. When I learned that this book was also about a relationship between a professor and his student, I was even more intrigued. I was worried that the controversial subject matter would hurt the overall story, but my curiosity was piqued none-the-less.
Maise sees herself as a lost cause. Her mother is a drug addict and her life is nothing special. She has no ambitions and no real friends. She merely exists from one day to the next. That all seems to change when she visits the local fair one night and comes face-to-face with a handsome older man who seems to spark something inside her that she never knew existed. She leaves him after their one-night stand thinking she would never see him again. Little did she know that she would see him sooner than she realized. It seems that Maise had just had sex with her new film class teacher.
Evan tries to resist Maise. He tries to keep her at arms length but something happens to him the same night that they met. He felt something for Maise that he had never expected to feel. Now the two of them must confront their feelings for each other and navigate a relationship in secret for fear of the consequences if they are found out. Unfortunately, secrets are never secrets for long and rumors are starting to circulate. Now Evan and Maise face a new problem: give up on each other or risk it all.
There are those books that you read and you think you can predict how the story will play out. After being a reader for so long, I tend to come to a conclusion of how the story will go in the very first chapters. I did the same with Unteachable. It's not a great thing to do when you are trying to approach a book with no expectations, but it's sometimes instinctual. The difference with this book and my expectations are night and day. Raeder is not afraid to push the envelope and touch on things that would make any close-minded person squirm. The characters were just so poetically perfect to me. Maise made me ache for the tough hand she was dealt. Evan was that storybook prince whose armor is a little tarnished but still will do anything to save the princess.
I loved that Raeder was not afraid to cross that line from fluff piece romance to bold literature. This book... This masterpiece is one of the best books i have read in years.
Be bold, followers of mine, and give Unteachable a read. You won't be disappointed. Besides, who doesn't find a romance between a student and a hot professor a bit enticing?
