9780062283528
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Tampa audiobook

  • By: Alissa Nutting
  • Narrator: Kathleen McInerney
  • Category: Fiction, Literary
  • Length: 8 hours 21 minutes
  • Publisher: HarperAudio
  • Publish date: July 02, 2013
  • Language: English
  • (19908 ratings)
(19908 ratings)
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Tampa Audiobook Summary

Celeste Price is an eighth-grade English teacher in suburban Tampa. She’s undeniably attractive. She drives a red Corvette with tinted windows. Her husband, Ford, is rich, square-jawed, and devoted to her.

But Celeste’s devotion lies elsewhere. She has a singular sexual obsession–fourteen-year-old boys. Celeste pursues her craving with sociopathic meticulousness and forethought; her sole purpose in becoming a teacher is to fulfill her passion and provide her access to her compulsion. As the novel opens, fall semester at Jefferson Jr. High is beginning.

In mere weeks, Celeste has chosen and lured the lusciously naive Jack Patrick into her web. Jack is enthralled and in awe of his teacher, and, most important, willing to accept Celeste’s terms for a secret relationship–car rides after school; rendezvous at Jack’s house while his single father works late; body-slamming encounters in Celeste’s empty classroom between periods.

Ever mindful of the danger–the perpetual risk of exposure, Jack’s father’s own attraction to her, and the ticking clock as Jack leaves innocent boyhood behind–the hyperbolically insatiable Celeste bypasses each hurdle with swift thinking and shameless determination, even when the solutions involve greater misdeeds than the affair itself. In slaking her sexual thirst, Celeste Price is remorseless and deviously free of hesitation, a monstress driven by pure motivation. She deceives everyone, and cares nothing for anyone or anything but her own pleasure.

With crackling, rampantly unadulterated prose, Tampa is a grand, uncompromising, seriocomic examination of want and a scorching literary debut.

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Tampa Audiobook Narrator

Kathleen McInerney is the narrator of Tampa audiobook that was written by Alissa Nutting

Alissa Nutting is an assistant professor of English at Grinnell College. She is the author of the story collection Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, as well as the novel Tampa.

About the Author(s) of Tampa

Alissa Nutting is the author of Tampa

Tampa Full Details

Narrator Kathleen McInerney
Length 8 hours 21 minutes
Author Alissa Nutting
Category
Publisher HarperAudio
Release date July 02, 2013
ISBN 9780062283528

Subjects

The publisher of the Tampa is HarperAudio. includes the following subjects: The BISAC Subject Code is Fiction, Literary

Additional info

The publisher of the Tampa is HarperAudio. The imprint is HarperAudio. It is supplied by HarperAudio. The ISBN-13 is 9780062283528.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

karen

June 19, 2018

hoo boy.this is one of those books that people are going to have opinions about.and i look forward to people getting all angry and hysterical at me for liking it. for liking it a lot. because the subject matter is pretty ick, right? who is going to be all out and proud saying they liked a book about pedophilia if it doesn't come from the pen of nabokov? (hebephilia, sure, but still...) but it's a pretty accomplished book. i mean, what does it set out to do? it sets out to get you in the head of a sexual predator. well, guess what? success!! you are in there but good.and it is decidedly uncomfortable.this is about "know thy enemy." and she does. i thought a.m. homes nailed the subject matter with The End of Alice, but this one just takes it one sticky foot further.and i mean, shit, how many monsterotica books have i read now? it's not like icky sex is something i shy away from. and i read my monsterporn clinically, because i think they are funny, and the sex just sorta slides off my eyes. and that's what this is, only it's more horrifying than funny. i know it's completely different but it feels like the same level of transgression - people putting their genitals where they have no business being. i mean, really, why would you ever want to have sex with a teenage boy?? they are not sexy,and don't you have a better use for your three minutes?? so that's out of the way.next point: is this just a lay-dee writing a backwards-Lolita? well, yes and no. that is definitely part of the novelty of this ...erm, novel, but it is more than that.someone asked me what this book was about, and i said "pedophilia. it's about a female teacher who seduces her fourteen-year-old suitor."and they said, "oh, that doesn't count."i was intrigued, so i pressed it."what do you mean??""when you say 'a pedophile walks into a room,' and it turns out to be a woman, it's like 'what is this, the wnba??" which cracked me up, but in a way, it kind of illuminates the way we deal with teenage sexuality.we still couch things in those antiquated terms of the slut and the player.little girls are cautioned that they are losing something or giving something up but with boys it is still dealt with in terms of conquest, of rite of passage, of coming of age. and what teenage boy wouldn't want to sleep with his ultra-hot teacher, given the opportunity? it's still criminal, but somehow less victim-y.and, no, i do not have children nor do i deal with them in my day-to-day, but i watch svu, so i know what's what.our popular literature is growing darker:The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,The Dinner,Gone Girl, and even Fifty Shades of Grey.this is the shit the world is made of, and our literature reflects it. the reality is that there are beautiful people with sick minds who might not get caught.literature, like life, never promised you justice. and allis she a sympathetic character? no way. is she redeemed, is she symbolic, is she punished? nope.but it is a quaint and infantile stance for readers to need to like their protagonists. it's a little adorable, but it ignores the loooong tradition of the antihero in fiction, and i get really frustrated when i hear people whining that they didn't like a book because the protagonist was a jerk or a sociopath, or a pedophile. not every book is going to be written by nicholas sparks.but back to lolita.this is completely different from lolita, in its treatment. lolita was a one-sided love story. this one is about need and obsession. it is eroticism without attachment. she is pure predator consuming what she needs. i'm not sure if that makes this more or less problematic. probably more. i think we are more forgiving with star-crossed, impossible lovers than we are with someone who has an itch to scratch and doesn't care who gets hurt in the scratching. and it is more realistic this way; more troubling.she has her compulsions, and she is dangerously able to justify her needs, while allowing that they are "wrong" to the world at large:Sex struck me as a seafood with the shortest imaginable half-life, needing to be peeled and eaten the moment the urge ripened. Even by sixteen, seventeen, it seemed that people became too comfortable with their desires to have any objectivity over their vulgar movements. They closed their eyes to avoid awkward orgasm faces, slipped lingerie made for models and mannequins onto wholly imperfect bodies. Who was that queen who tried to keep her youth by bathing in the blood of virgins? She should've had sex with them instead, or at least had sex with them before killing them. Many might label this a contradiction, but I felt it to be a simple irony: in my view, having sex with teenagers was the only way to keep the act wholesome. They're observant; they catalogue every detail to obsess upon. They're obsessive by nature. Should there be any other way to experience sex?I remember taking my shirt off for a friend's younger brother in college. The way his eyes lit up like he was seeing snow for the first time.(and i am totally posting text from the ARC, which is a reviewer no-no, but for a book that deals with taboo in such a fearless way, i feel it is apt)that passage definitely reminds me of that staggeringly good 2-3 pages in Beautiful Losers, where i came dangerously close to understanding the attraction to very young girls. which is just cohen's power as a writer, and nothing to do with any latent criminality in me.this a selfish situation because it is not about the act, but about the transgression itself; the taboo. it's about taking and teaching and uneven power systems."I won't tell," he said, his arms holding my waist with amateur stiffness. I smiled, thinking about the lover he'd become and all the things he'd try with me for the very first time. I'd be the sexual yardstick for his whole life: Jack would spend the rest of his days trying but failing to relive the experience of being given everything at a time when he knew nothing. Like a tollbooth in his memory, every partner he'd have afterwards would have to pass through the gate of my comparison, and it would be a losing equation. The numbers could never be as favorable as they were right now, when his naivety would be subtracted from my experience to produce the largest sum of astonishment possible.right there, she inadvertently acknowledges jack's future difficulties, in his vie sexuelle, but she just does not care.i understand, intellectually, the desire of taking someone before they have learned anything and imprinting them with what you like, but whooo, those are deep and dark waters.her lucidity is what is most disturbing, for me. she is so preoccupied with aging, which is par for the course when it comes to beautiful women, but her particular bent will become more difficult as she ages, and she revolts against the betrayal of the body in the aging process:There was no way for women, for anyone, to gracefully age.After a certain point, any detail like the woman's cheerleader hairstyle that implied youth simply looked ridiculous. Despite her athletic prowess, the jogger's cratered thighs seemed more like something that would die one day than something that would not. I didn't know how long I had before this window slammed down on my fingers as well - with diligence, and avoiding children, perhaps a decade. The older i became, the harder it would be to get what I wanted, but that was probably true of everyone with everything.and:I knew I'd find it hard to cut the girls in my classes any slack at all, knowing the great generosity life had already gifted them. They were at the very beginning of their sexual lives with no need to hurry - whenever they were ready, a great range of attractions would be waiting for them, easy and disposable. Their urges would grow up right alongside them like a shadow. They'd never feel their libido a deformed thing to be kept chained up in the attic of their mind and to only be fed in secret after dark.but there is, occasionally, small moments where there is a glimmer of something potentially salvageable in her:At times, I wished that my genitals were prosthetic, something I could slip out of.i do think this is a controversial novel, but it is brilliantly written. and you can get all emotional and "think of teh children," on it, but that's not really useful.this is something that happens, and i would rather not live in a cave, wearing blinders, reading nicholas sparks. i wanna be informed.if this makes no sense, blame the pinot.come to my blog!

Emily May

September 06, 2013

Believe me, I can easily understand all the negative reactions to this book but I can't help but find it absolutely fascinating.In fact, since putting the book down, I've given myself a while to think about it and, the more I do, the more I find myself acknowledging how clever and brilliant it is. And even feminist in a way, but I'll get to that later. You should be aware, if you haven't already gathered from other reviews, this book is full of vile descriptions and crude language. Being inside Celeste's head makes you feel like you need a good long shower afterwards and if you're not ready for graphic descriptions of the female anatomy and masturbation methods, then you're not ready for this book. No details are spared here: you have been warned.The story is about eighth-grade teacher, Celeste Price, who on the outside appears to be everything anyone would want to be: attractive, intelligent, happily married... but underneath the surface lurks a secret she has kept hidden since she was fourteen years old. A secret desire for fourteen year old boys. It plagues her every thought, every step, every move. In private, all she can think about are ways to act upon her longing. She wants to set herself up in a position to engage in an affair with one of the objects of her desire. And eventually, an opportunity arises. Celeste begins a sexual relationship with the fourteen year old Jack. She pursues him, seduces him and uses him to fulfill her sexual needs. There is no love or romance in this story. The only one fooled is Jack. Celeste is not another Humbert in that she never attempts to convince the reader or herself that what she does is for love. It's all about sex.What this book does, above everything else, is make us question the gendered view we have of sexual relationships. We are inside Celeste's mind, getting a good look at how perverted, depraved and even sociopathic she is, so we experience outrage at the way society and the law allow her to escape justice because she is an attractive young woman. There's an assumption still often being made that women are the passive gender in a sexual relationship and that men are natural predators/aggressors. It's hard for us to imagine a woman sexually abusing a man. This question is even asked in the book: "If you were a teenage male, would you call a sexual experience with her abuse?" A teen girl with a male teacher is considered a victim of his evil manipulation - a passive victim without a sexuality of her own coming into play. But a teen boy with a female teacher is victim of nothing more than the perfect teen male fantasy. Can attractive women really be rapists? Isn't Celeste just giving the boys what they want? Doesn't that make it okay? These are the questions one might ask if they weren't living inside her mind.While the disgusting and graphic language left me feeling uncomfortable at times, I also felt it was completely necessary to make the point effectively. The point being that a woman can be as much of a sexual predator as a man and that teen boys can be as much of a victim as teen girls. If we'd been treated to something akin to Humbert's narrative in Lolita, if it was our sympathy that Celeste looked for, I think the important message would be completely missed. We needed Celeste to be a monster and a sexual predator to show that women can be. And to show how female monsters often go unpunished because of their gender. It reminded me of Gillian Flynn's characters and the way she creates such fantastically evil women. It's strange, I suppose, to consider that creating female murderers and rapists is a form of feminism but I think it serves to break down ideas we hold about gender. I also think it's incredibly important to acknowledge male abuse by females because it does happen and nowhere near enough is written about it. It's such a taboo subject that male victims often feel ashamed of it and unable to get help.I have to confess: I quite liked the language. Well, okay, perhaps "like" is the wrong word but I really appreciate crude honesty in books, particularly when the author utilises language the way this author does. I'm not sure we needed such a graphic description of Celeste's vagina and her masturbation methods but, what the hell, it certainly achieved it's purpose with me. And, strange as it may sound, there was an odd beauty to the author's writing that gave a certain artistry to such descriptions. They were gross, naturally, but weirdly poetic.One thing that is true most of all about Tampa: it makes you think. I put it down and literally spent about an hour sat there, just going over everything in my head. I thought about the way we view relationships, what this means for both men and women, victims and rapists; I thought about the judicial system and the way the law isn't about guilty/not guilty but the show you put on (which admittedly made me sing Razzle Dazzle from Chicago); I'm still thinking about it all now. One thing I can say for certain - I'm really glad I picked this up.

Roxane

March 03, 2013

Five stars for sheer audacity and fearlnessness. This book has some issues but Nutting has completely committed to her premise of a hot, twenty-something female teacher/pedophile. People are going to have LOTS to say about this book. There are going to be comparisons to Lolita and American Psycho but the similarities between Tampa and those books are on the surface only. In Tampa, Celeste is her desires and the plot is how she goes about satisfying those desires. To say this novel is explicit would be to put it mildly. What Nutting does particularly well is put us directly into Celeste's body, the terrifying heat of it. Much more to say later. There is no other book like this, that's for sure.

Felicia

August 14, 2019

"Ford, like the husbands of most women who marry for money, is far too old. Since I'm twenty-six myself, it's true that he and I are close peers. But thirty-one is roughly seventeen years past my window of sexual interest."HOLY SHITMrs Price, an 8th grade teacher, has an unadulterated sexual obsession with 14 year old boys. Not just any 14 year old boy, but lesser developed boys. Once any sign of manhood manifests itself, she not only loses interest, she is repulsed. WTFThis story is told entirely from the POV of Celeste Price. She has no shame in telling you, in detail, about her overt sexual proclivities, including graphic descriptions of her sexual trysts with boys.YOU'VE BEEN WARNEDThis sexual fixation runs her life. Every moment of her existence is spent finding ways to satiate the insatiable.CUCKOO, CUCKOO "With a dull roar, the buses began rolling by and my eyes followed them like I was watching a shell game at a carnival: all of them looked identical, but one had a prize inside. Which bus was Jack’s?"DAMNNutting is an exceptional and courageous writer offering an in depth look into the psychopathic mind of a sexual predator that leaves the reader questioning everything they've ever thought about this timely subject. BRAVOMy thoughts on the female teacher/male student relationship has been forever altered. I have to mention that cover! It's brilliant. You'll have to buy a physical copy of the book to truly appreciate its significance. *Note to the author: the car was first introduced as a Camaro then became a Corvette and Corvettes don't have backseats.

Justin

October 22, 2018

Yikes! Was expecting a kind of trainwreck drama similar to “Notes on a Scandal” but this is closer to The Exorcist or Silence of the Lambs. Mrs. Price is every bit as terrifying as Hannibal Lecter.Kudos to Alissa Nutting for taking on this subject in a daring way. There’s many times it seems to toe the line between art and obscene, but as a complete product every detail ends up contributing to the character’s disturbing mindset. Removing one star for the sheer ickiness factor, but it really is superbly written. Much more cohesive than her other novel Made for Love.

Maxine

August 04, 2022

Wow, wow, wow - this novel tackles taboo stuff, namely the relentless, sociopathic sexual pursuit of teenage boys by a female eighth grade English teacher. It's a book you won't want to like as it's subject matter is just WRONG, but because it's so well written it's a brilliant bit of fiction.First read years ago I've just revisited this book. I wanted to see if it still impacted me.Celeste is married and very attractive with a never ending sexual thirst for teen boys, not teen boys that look like young men but teen boys who still look like, well, young teenage boys.She plans, executes and pursues her "prey". It's disturbing to be in her mind to say the least, she has zero sense of shame or concern, she is what she is. A sociopath at least, a sexual predator indeed.I didn't grow to like her and some scenes are just heartbreaking, the impact she has on the lives of others is quite devastating. She is a cold predator, plain and simple. This book challenges the existence of reversed roles, the woman who is the paedophile.She's clever, too clever and it's hard to read at times but the writing keeps you hooked, because the writing is brilliant.The sex scenes in the book are explicit and graphic,you need to be prepared for that if you read it, but by golly they are well written scenes regardless. Alissa Nutting has written a controversial book indeed, I honestly couldn't put it down. It's like morbid fascination. This is a book that divides you all the way through and would make for a brilliant book club discussion. It's like tasting something you want to spit out but as the texture is so nice you persist. That's what this book did to me. It's a very thought-provoking book.Make it one of your more challenging books to put on your to-read list for sure. I have it 5 stars because the quality of the writing is outstanding and the book is a stand out. But as for Celeste and her impact on young lives, I don't like it, neither will you, but you will keep reading anyway.I'll forever be thankful to the librarian that recommended I read this book after he loved it and his wife despised it so he needed my help to settle the score.Dare you enter the pages of this taboo novel and come out unchanged on the other side. Would love to discuss!

Elyse

January 01, 2016

Middle school teacher in Florida --Celeste Price --26 year old sociopathic protagonist --married to a police officer likes teenage boys. In particular, one 14-year-old boy.This story is loosely taken from the true story about Debra Jean Beasley, or better known as Debra Lafave......who pleaded guilty in 2005 to lewd or lascivious battery. The charges stemmed from a sexual encounter with a 14- year old male student in the summer of 2004. This story will shock and disturb many readers - at the same time the author does an excellent job exploring, examining, and describing how a victim is groomed -- and --things to watch out for so that sexual abuse is not developing. Told in first person, we take an inside look at the workings of Celeste's mind. As readers we judge her character...her actions... her thinking...our emotions are swimming in different directions....We face our own uncomfortableness - or not - reading explicit graphic sexual acts....seen through the eyes of a predator! Very Taboo topic... Excellent writing...not for everyone...yet this book makes you 'think'! And...if you enjoyed it...like I did... it will 'really' make you think! It's all very disgusting ... Repulsive....yet the storytelling was engrossing. How can that be?

Shawn

August 28, 2022

what theee fukkkk….. so unbelievably disturbing, 5 stars

Charles

March 18, 2013

It's inconceivable to me just how good this book is. Not just destined to be one of my favorite novels of the year, but quite possibly one of my favorite novels of life. I think Celeste Price would approve of my thinking that I haven't wanted to take a shower after reading several chapters in a sitting, for fear of not having the words on my skin anymore. Fortunately for me, I can always read the book again, after I finish. As I near the end (sadly), I tweeted to the author this evening:@cblackstone: @AlissaNutting This book is so good, I'm no longer entirely convinced I'm really reading. It's a dream. I'm dreaming that I discovered the best novel I've read since the point where novels did this sort of thing to me. Thank you.This book really is a joyous and momentous occasion for prose. I just hope the haters can see the problem, like so many perceived problems, isn't with the novel, its author, or its characters, but with themselves, and their inability, despite seeming to engage in the act, to really read. That inability, and not the art, should be what's "under indictment."

Meike

February 13, 2023

There are a lot of weak points in this book, but the novel is captivating for its audacity: Our narrator is a female hebephile with the telling name Celeste Price, a 26-year-old middle school English teacher who rapes teenage boys without remorse. Celeste is an exceptionally beautiful hypersexual manipulative predator, and the way she is written turns her into a cipher: Nutting is not interested in investigating a psychological disorder, she is performing a test with literary and societal tropes related to sex. In the main narrative thread, Celeste grooms and rapes 14-year-old Jack, and all events play into the widespread "sexy teacher" fantasy that often glorifies statutory rape. When she starts a second sexual relationship with a minor who can't consent, things escalate further. The obvious comparison here is of course Lolita, told by a male hebephile, but while Humbert Humbert tries to manipulate readers with rationalizations and beautiful, enchanting language, Celeste Price, wife of a policeman from a wealthy family, acknowledges the criminal nature of her behavior and fears to be found out, but has no moral inhibitions and openly admits that she wants sexual satisfaction and power: She dreams of forever being remembered as the first sexual partner, an idea commonly connected to the male virginity fetish. The language is plain, drastic, and explicit, without any ambivalence, compassion or moments of moral doubt. Celeste is a sociopath not unlike Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, but while Patrick haunts physical perfection and status, Celeste uses physical perfection and her teacher status as tools to solicit sex. The character of Celeste Price is inspired by a woman the author went to high school with: Debra Lafave, a former English teacher in Tampa and convicted sex offender (weirdly also the ex-girlfriend of Backstreet Boy Nick Carter). The novel follows Lafave's criminal case concerning the main points. There were also rumors that Harmony Korine would turn "Tampa" into a movie, but unfortunately, the project has apparently been dropped. So all in all, this is a stomach-turning, relentless piece of literature intentionally devoid of lyrical beauty and as such a fascinating experiment in the field of transgressive writing.

Blair

July 09, 2015

This is definitely not going to be a book for everyone, and it's bound to be controversial, whatever that means these days. However, I knew I'd want to read it from the first time I heard about it. That may make me sound a bit strange when you consider that the book is about a woman who has an all-consuming sexual obsession for teenage boys... But it got a a good review from Karen, Queen of Goodreads, and it was thanks to her reviews that I discovered and loved The End of Alice, a novel with similarly controversial subject matter which happens to be completely brilliant. The fantastic cover of the UK edition (which I'm kind of surprised they got away with - but then, the cover is nothing compared to the content, I suppose) cemented my certainty that I had to read this.Celeste Price is a beautiful, wealthy woman in her mid-twenties. Married to handsome Ford, a police officer from a rich family, she appears to have everything in the eyes of the outside world. Indeed, one might be tempted to wonder why she has bothered to train as a schoolteacher when she clearly has no need to work. The answer lies in her proclivity for schoolboys, specifically fourteen-year-olds. Despite living an outwardly and happy normal life, she is wholly devoted to pursuing this obsession, although she mostly appears to live in a dreamworld and gives little thought to her long-term future: she is determined that teaching will provide her with a stream of suitable 'lovers', but appears to devote little energy to actually teaching her students anything whatsoever. This, then, is a portrait of an insatiably sexual and avaricious woman, with the plot hanging on the chain of events that unfolds when Celeste starts to put her plan into action, targeting a virginal student named Jack.I am not a stranger to fiction with controversial themes - I loved The End of Alice, American Psycho, Lolita, Lamb and Notes of a Scandal (all but one of which, of course, have notable similarities to this in terms of why they're controversial) - but there were times when Tampa tested my resolve. For one thing, there is a lot of sex in this book and it is graphic, almost biological, in its detail. Even if Celeste's partners were adult men, there would be nothing erotic or sexy about these scenes: the word I would use is carnal. Celeste is portrayed not as a victim of her 'condition' but as a ruthless predator, thinking of almost nothing else but her obsession, constantly plotting ways to secure her next target and scoping out her pupils to test their potential. She barely teaches her classes, constantly turning to fantasies and hoping the students will start talking about sex to liven up her day. Although there is one point, near the beginning of the book, when she refers to her sexuality as 'a deformed thing to be kept chained up in the attic', thereafter she pursues her goal almost shamelessly and shows no remorse or emotion. There is also intensely unpleasant content that has nothing to do with underage boys: Celeste is essentially raped at least twice in the book, in scenes that are extremely disturbing to read.Despite all of the above there is a seam of dark humour running throughout the novel. When Celeste's preferred boy turns fifteen, she wonders whether it would be wise to tactfully introduce him to anti-ageing creams; many of the fantasies she has are ridiculous, in a bizarro sort of way, rather than actually being sexual (aforementioned boy appearing in the form of a giant and crushing her car with his gargantuan penis is just one example). With Celeste drugging herself stupid to endure sex with Ford, stealing away to masturbate furiously over boybands' music videos and fending off the advances of a variety of grotesque adult male characters, this could be seen as a pitch-black satire of the 'perfect' middle-class American marriage.The more I think about it, the more I think this is an incredibly brave book to have written. Nutting has got so thoroughly inside her protagonist's head that there is nothing the narrative shies away from - it's seriously explicit, and conservative critics of the book are bound to speculate on what this says about the author and why she would have written this story when she could have chosen any other subject. Tampa is an undeniably disturbing piece of work, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to everyone because you're going to need a strong stomach to get through some of it: however, it is also brilliantly written, incisive, strangely funny, dark, shocking and clever. If you enjoyed any of the opinion-dividing books I mentioned above, you must read this one too.

Steve

August 05, 2013

This is an odd one to rate and review. Was it well-written? Oh, yeah. Almost... too well-written. Felt a couple times like the plot was a bit too overtly manipulated to steer the story toward a particular conclusion, but maybe I'm just being picky.Was it entertaining? Hell, yeah. It was hilarious, in the way that sociopaths can be hilarious with their overriding desire to please themselves at the expense of all others (and specifically, Celeste's inner thoughts about those around her.) The voice of this novel felt so real and so alive, it would be hard to believe that this specific person doesn't actually exist out there, somewhere.Was it arousing in uncomfortable ways. Well, yeah. As a guy, it's difficult not to imagine my own 14-year old self being in that situation, and how amazing it would have been. But then my 14-year old son would walk into the room while I was reading, and that fantasy reading world would come crashing down around me like a controlled demolition. That's when the creepy factor really sets in with this book. Removing yourself from Celeste's fantasy world (which is all-encompassing, as this is written from her first-person perspective) makes the book uncomfortable. Imagining if the gender roles were reversed, makes it creepy as fuck.Bravo, Alissa Nutting, for creating one of the most memorable characters I've ever read. But this is not a book I plan on revisiting any time soon. Or ever.

Emmy

August 02, 2022

** spoiler alert ** buckle in bitches because this was a wild fucking book. *CHECK TW BEFORE READING* I think the concept of the book was amazing. I just read my dark Vanessa & it was interesting to see the rolls switched where it was a young female teacher grooming her 8th grade students. Celeste is sick as FUCK. Throw her in prison immediately. I’m so pissed with the ending.I will have nightmares for the next week because of this book so read with caution. It tackles the same topics that my dark Vanessa covered but it was 10x worse and way more graphic

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Speechify is one of the best apps for audiobooks. The pricing structure is the most competitive in the market and the app is easy to use. It features the best sellers and award winning authors. Listen to your favorite books or discover new ones and listen to real voice actors read to you. Getting started is easy, the first book is free.

Research showcasing the brain health benefits of reading on a regular basis is wide-ranging and undeniable. However, research comparing the benefits of reading vs listening is much more sparse. According to professor of psychology and author Dr. Kristen Willeumier, though, there is good reason to believe that the reading experience provided by audiobooks offers many of the same brain benefits as reading a physical book.

Audiobooks are recordings of books that are read aloud by a professional voice actor. The recordings are typically available for purchase and download in digital formats such as MP3, WMA, or AAC. They can also be streamed from online services like Speechify, Audible, AppleBooks, or Spotify.
You simply download the app onto your smart phone, create your account, and in Speechify, you can choose your first book, from our vast library of best-sellers and classics, to read for free.

Audiobooks, like real books can add up over time. Here’s where you can listen to audiobooks for free. Speechify let’s you read your first best seller for free. Apart from that, we have a vast selection of free audiobooks that you can enjoy. Get the same rich experience no matter if the book was free or not.

It depends. Yes, there are free audiobooks and paid audiobooks. Speechify offers a blend of both!

It varies. The easiest way depends on a few things. The app and service you use, which device, and platform. Speechify is the easiest way to listen to audiobooks. Downloading the app is quick. It is not a large app and does not eat up space on your iPhone or Android device.
Listening to audiobooks on your smart phone, with Speechify, is the easiest way to listen to audiobooks.

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