Bookaholics book club: Trust games

Trust games by Simon Packham
Available now
piccadillypress.co.uk

What's it about?When kind, charismatic new drama teacher, Mr Moore, arrives at school, Beth s life starts to look up. She s cast as the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, and as she grows close to super-popular Hannah (Juliet), Beth finally has the female friend she s been yearning for. Meanwhile it seems that all the girls including Beth are in love with Mr Moore. And when a scandal breaks, Beth must make a decision that can only have dire consequences for everyone involved.

My review

I've got to be honest, when I first started Trust games I wasn't really into it, there's no particular depth to the writing and I didn't like Beth at all. But I continued because I wanted to see how it handled such a sensitive subject and its pretty short so I knew I'd read it quickly.

After turning the last pages I feel myself conflicted, see, I kept turning the pages, the story felt true to life and I wanted to see what happened but at the same time I wish the book had more to it, that it was written better. I just felt like everything could've been explored more and that the dialogue left something to be desired, but then maybe I'm just too used to reading American books because even when I read British books by British authors, the slang always sounds off to me because I know me and my friends don't talk like that in reality. Either way it makes it hard to figure out if that's just a personal problem for me, who knows.

Anyway, I mentioned before I wasn't a fan of Beth, there was something so pathetic about her and she was so sullen, I'm not sure why Grunt was friends with her at all, even if they'd known each other since they were kids. I also wish we'd got to know Mr Moore better because I couldn't see the attraction to him at all except that he was young and good looking, all Beth knows about him is that he likes poetry and The cure. Becuase of this, the characters and their actions didn't always ring true but the story itself did, it was really something that could happen exactly like that in reality. And Beth's final action at the end of the book did something towards redeeming her character and I liked that she at least went a way to fixing the other relationships in her life that she seemed pretty blind to, and selfish about, at the start of the book.

What I did like about this book was how it explored the content, obviously its about a teacher and student relationship of the forbidden kind. I was glad it, at least briefly, explored a difference of opinion between the characters outside of the relationship, everyone was trying to find somewhere to place the blame but the ultimate message of the book was that no matter if the young girl said yes and thought she was in love, Mr Moore was completely in the wrong, as the adult, he was taking advantage of a young girl and should have been the one to stop it from happening, something I agree with whole heartedly.

So all in all, I'd recommend this for a quick read but don't expect it to change your life, well unless you're thinking about sleeping with your teacher, then it'll show you why not to!