Book Review: The Teacher by Freida McFadden

Rating: ★★★★☆(4/5)

---

Introduction:

Released February 2024. Read January 2025.

I had to prepare myself for this one. I saw the tag line Lesson #1: Trust No One and about halfway through the novel I knew why. This is a layered psychological thriller where there is no reliable narrator. What I really had to prepare for was the fact that this does have (Trigger Warning) a lot of grooming and depicts a student teacher relationship. As a teacher myself, I don’t get triggered enough not to read but I do get major ick when I see that as a plot point. Seeing that this was from two different peoples POV with opposite agendas was also intriguing to me.

---

Summary: A Brief Overview (Without Major Spoilers)

Eve is introduced as living the American Dream. She has a perfect husband, a solid career, and her biggest flaw is that she loves to spend money on shoes.

Addie is a young student who is trying to overcome a scandal she was involved in the year before. She’s a liar that ruins lives and can’t be trusted. At least that’s the rumor.

The truth is both characters are hiding secrets that they would rather stay in the closet.

The story is told from alternating viewpoints between the two FMCs for part 1. We see the lead up to where these two lives become intertwined and that’s when the drama really starts to pick up.

Part 2 and 3 add in Eve’s husband Nate. He is the hottest teacher in school and seemingly the perfect husband to Eve and Caring mentor to Addie. Part 1 reveals hints to the real nature of Nate and Parts 2 and 3 confirm it.

These three are in a tangled web that is bound to end in… Well I won’t give that away.

---

What Worked for Me:

The POV switching between Eve and Addie. One is 30 and the other is 16. Both are juvinile in my opinion and that works. As the layers are peeled back it becomes clear why Eve has issues with acting maturely or sometimes overreacting while Addie tries to act far older than what she is.

The unreliable narrator. You really don’t know who to believe or if you can trust either character. It creates a psychological effect that I loved reading.

The build. I looked and I was at 61% when shit really started hitting the fan. Before that was a ton of build up. It wasn’t useless lead up either. The pieces started to crumble in the house of cards that had been built up to that point and it felt like going down a roller coaster.

The Epilogue! I sat back in my seat and had to pick up my jaw from the floor. I had guessed almost every plot point up until then. I read enough that I can usually guess where a book is going. This one, nope. There were hints that I knew something was weird but I couldn’t figure out why until all the pieces snapped together in the epilogue.

---

What Didn’t Work for Me: Trigger Warnings and Criticisms

The grooming. EW. It made me very uncomfortable as a teacher myself to see that portrayed. I won’t say who the teacher was or the student. I will leave that up to the reader to see for themselves but just know it’s uncomfortable. What makes it worse for me is that it’s told from the POV of the student. It is so vomit inducing for me to see how they feel like this teacher cares for them and how that relationship unfolds.

The levels of bullying that happened to Addie but no one wanted to intervene. So many characters just let it happen and I am not a fan of that in books. I am so used to calling out teens if they are being little shits. The number of adults who let Addie down just make it worse. There were just a lot of bad teachers and it pissed me off.

---

Final Thoughts:

This was a GoodReads choice nominee for favorite thriller/mystery and I can see why. Just when you think you know what is about to happen, you don’t. It is rare for me not to guess what’s going to happen. I have a master’s in English with an emphasis in film studies. I literally studied how writing works for film and novels and have read so many books about plot structure that usually I can guess a plot within the first fifty or so pages. This book wasn’t much different. What got me was the ending. It was just so ‘What?!’ that I have to say it was one of my favorite endings I have read in a long time. For that alone, I would recommend this book.