this...made me uncomfortable when i first read it
now that i’ve read another hundred pages, i’ve realized a few things:
1) this book is not only as terrible as i expected it would be, it’s worse.
2) the above paragraphs were not, in fact, just a fluke, or a single occurrence of bad phrasing, but rather the book’s attempt to warn me
(content note for implied...statutory rape, i guess?? i don’t really...know what this author is trying to get at, but it feels like that)
the best (worst?) thing about this book is that it only has season 1 to reference, so there are a number of things in it that are just blatantly incorrect. i almost wish i could use that as a justification to excuse the creepiness i’m about to expostulate on, but sadly, given the fact that season one is all this author should really have needed to create a timeline, the writing choices can’t be explained away by some kind of timeline/character age confusion. this author just makes terrible, terrible decisions, ones which are not - once again - even remotely supported by the season one canon.
the back half of this book is composed almost completely of long, interminable flashbacks to when derek is 16 years old and on the swim team
and kate argent is - wait for it
MS. argent, who is a SUBSTITUTE TEACHER
who could lose her job or go to jail for making advances towards derek hale
yes, ‘lusty chuckle’ is a phrase i had to read with my own two eyes
not “PRACTICALLY a teacher.” a teacher! SHE’S A TEACHER
neither could i, derek, because she’s an ADULT TEACHER and you are SIXTEEN
YOU ARE A TEACHER!!!!! a substitute teacher is still a TEACHER!!! YOU ARE A GROWN-UP I CAN’T
SO MS. ARGENT takes sixteen year old derek hale back to her apartment and feeds him a roast beef sandwich bite by bite and then asks him if he’s “ready,” which derek is apparently very excited about, because sixteen year old kids would totally never react negatively by being sexually approached by an adULT TEACHER
again i reiterate - this is a published novel.