{"id":1628,"date":"2009-04-05T20:11:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-05T20:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=1628"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:30:53","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:30:53","slug":"knowing-too-much-boy-toy-by-barry-lyga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=1628","title":{"rendered":"Knowing Too Much: Boy Toy by Barry Lyga"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5321302753294278834\"<\/a>I\u2019m sad to report that Barry Lyga\u2019s Boy Toy has been in my TBR pile for an embarrassingly long time. However, I\u2019m pleased to report that I\u2019ve now read it, and though it\u2019s not an easy story to read, Lyga should be commended not only for his writing chops but also for his courage in tackling the difficult subject of a teacher in a romantic “relationship” with a much younger student. And he does it without pulling any punches. <\/p>\n

Every single character in this book is amazingly well-developed and each one has a role to play\u2014whether they are complicit, ignorant, or confused about the situation. The story begins with narrator Josh almost ready to graduate from high school. He\u2019s a successful baseball player and a whiz at math, but he doesn\u2019t have many close friends. That\u2019s because he lives in the kind of small town where everybody knows everybody else\u2019s secrets\u2014and his secret is the Elephant in the Room kind of secret. <\/p>\n

For Josh, he\u2019s just treading water until he can leave the town where people see him as That Kid. And then he finds out that Eve has been released from prison, and his life goes topsy turvy again. Even his friendship with Rachel\u2014the first time he\u2019s ever opened himself to the possibility of a romantic relationship since Eve, and the first time he\u2019s ever really talked about what happened\u2014even that seems tenuous and frightening. <\/p>\n

Told in alternating sections that flip between present and past, this is an absorbing, well-crafted, and well-written book that drew me in on a very strong emotional level\u2014I believed in the narrator and his pain, as well as his confusion and conflicted ideas about what truly happened when he was twelve. At the same time, it\u2019s the sort of story that forces you to think about what it means to be a victim, what it means to be the perpetrator of an inappropriate relationship, and what it means to simply be flawed as all human beings are. This book was the 2006 Cybils <\/a>YA winner, and it\u2019s easy to see why it was a contender.<\/p>\n

Buy Boy Toy<\/i> from an independent bookstore near you!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m sad to report that Barry Lyga\u2019s Boy Toy has been in my TBR pile for an embarrassingly long time. However, I\u2019m pleased to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,31,25,21,5],"class_list":["post-1628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-af","tag-cybils","tag-problem-novels","tag-realistic-fiction","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1628"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5552,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628\/revisions\/5552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}