LEAH RAEDER REVIEWS
UNTEACHABLE
by Leah Raeder
new adult // contemporary // teacher-student // romance
"There's something so beautiful waiting for you. Don't run from it. Run toward it."
For a book that begins with the words, "there's fuck-all to do", I was not prepared for how completely stunning Unteachable would be. The entire story is like one long, delicious poem, unafraid to use terms like "fuck-all" a breath away from phrases like, "Something flashed between us and broke open on his naked chest, leaving a glittering scar. A tiny diamond. Then another. Then another."
WHO HAS EVER DESCRIBED CRYING LIKE THAT??? It was so beautiful I want to cry. Leah Raeder's writing is so rich I could taste it. I have not read anything with such striking imagery and emotion since Revolutionary Road or Lolita-- and, hey, this one didn't even leave me wanting to jump off a cliff!
I'm having a love affair with this writing. Oh my God. She knows how to string the most simple but perfect words together and make exquisite comparisons, and the story just engulfed me like it was living and breathing.
This is the kind of writing that can easily slip into sounding preachy and pretentious. Most lyrical prose does just that because it's used to cover up one-dimensional characters and predictable plots. But Raeder avoids that ditch effortlessly, because her story is full of character and her characters are full of life.
I thought I was getting myself into a light, fluffy teacher-student affair ordeal. I've read them before. I wasn't expecting anything new or earth-shattering-- I just like the racy forbidden love, I guess. But this was NOTHING like anything I have ever read. I think I've made my feelings clear on the writing style, but the characters became very special and important to me as well.
Evan was not the usual saintly teacher who remains adamant about "doing the right thing". He was... real. He was a thirty-two year old man-- a sweet and caring (though slightly broken) man who entered into a consensual relationship with a younger woman.
Maise was feeling as though she had outgrown her eighteen-year-old body and the immaturity of the people around her, but she didn't quite fit into the "adult" world yet, either. She was incredibly mature, but still naive. And I feel like I could say the same about Evan.
I was put off when I discovered just how old Evan was, but my concern fell away when I realized how the two of them fit together and were so good for each other-- at least when the conventions of the world we live in weren't getting in the way. What does age really mean anyway? "Nobody knows how to be a grown-up. We're all just pretending for each other."
And the story. What I really love is how unpredictable it was with the lack of angsty drama around every corner. These people were actually allowed to be happy and form a meaningful relationship. When shit finally hit the fan, it felt natural and powerful, never forced. Everything was so beautifully told, there was no need to inject angst into every other scene.
I always use the highlight feature on my Nook for lines or paragraphs I love. Usually, I come away from a book with about 5-10 highlights total. Unteachable is so saturated with neon green right now, the few lines that aren't highlighted stand out more than the ones that are.
I give all the sparkling silver gel-penned stars in the magical Milky Way for this book. Unf.
BLACK IRIS
by Leah Raeder
new adult // contemporary // dark
I'M SO UPSET. I DIDN'T LOVE IT.
I actually... disliked it...
I know, Lucy. I know.
But I can't give this less than 2 because Leah is an incredibly talented writer whom I admire so much. And the writing in this book was just as poetic and beautifully complex as I'd expect from her. This story was just not for me. I'm so bummed about this. Unteachable is one of my all-time favorite books, but Black Iris is missing the Unteachable magic. **there are some slight, non-specific spoilers ahead**
Our main character, Laney, is a frighteningly violent, drug-addicted, alcoholic, homicidal, suicidal maniac. She thinks everyone is beneath her. If you aren't struggling with your sexuality or suffering from mental illness, you are inferior in her eyes. Everyone in the world owes her something because she lacks the ability to forgive, move on, seek help, or find her own happiness. So of course, everyone else has to suffer for that. Nobody understands real pain like she does, so she devotes her entire life to exacting revenge on every last person who wronged her. Except... she blames all the other psychopaths in the book for things that SHE is responsible for. Yes, a certain person set something cruel in motion, but everything that happened after that was HER choice. Cops could have been called. Help could have been sought. She had no right to run around and inflict all this suffering on everyone around her for HER OWN POOR DECISIONS. I hate this girl and I could not get behind her twisted scheming AT ALL. Her revenge rampage felt over-the-top and utterly pointless. Her actions were completely unjustifiable and she is quite possibly the most self-absorbed character I've ever read in my life.
Laney was not written to be likeable in any way, but I didn't even enjoy disliking her. I just hated her. Which is better than indifference, I guess, but... I want Maise back.
I applaud Leah for throwing a female/female relationship out there in the mainstream romance section (where it should be, because romance is romance), but I feel like it was lost in all the darkness here. I couldn't support or care about the romance at all. At one point, Laney looks down her high-and-mighty nose at John Green's "manic pixie dream girls", which I found funny because her own love interest is nothing more than an MPDG herself. Blythe's sole purpose was to help Laney fulfill her sick, vengeful dreams and accept her own sexuality. She had no outside life, no goals or story or character arc of her own. And I couldn't support their relationship because it was completely unhealthy. Both of them needed serious professional medical help for their various mental illnesses. They did nothing but enable each other as they refused help and inhaled substances on every page, and it choked the life out of the story.
Laney also reminds us more than once that she is an unreliable narrator, which was frustrating because she's really not unreliable. She never lies or misleads the reader. She's the most blunt narrator ever. She tells you she's evil, she's unstable, she's an addict, she gets close to certain people specifically to use and hurt them. All truth. She lays it all out there. That's not unreliable at all. In her constant druggie haze I thought she would hallucinate and mislead us like the wonderfully unreliable One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest narrator, but no. She told us everything just the way it was. It damaged any sense of shock and awe I should have felt when discovering The Big Reveal at the end. Instead, it was just a shoulder shrug because I was prepared for it by Laney herself. She gave too much away. And that was the most disappointing thing, because this book could have been a Dangerous Girls-level mindfuck.
Maybe it was all just TOO dark for me. I love dark, twisted stories with complex "bad girls" and antiheros but this book just made me feel icky inside. All I could think about was how much I wish somebody would put these people in a mental hospital. All of them. But the story demonized medical help to the extreme. So... nobody gets any help ever. Alllllrighty then.
This was all just too dreary to be entertaining. I'm so sad.
