Boy Toy by Barry Lyga is the coming of age tale of eighteen year-old Joshua Mendel; he is a baseball fanatic, Math whiz and victim of sexual abuse. When Josh was twelve his history teacher, Eve, seduced him resulting in a sexual relationship that spanned four months. Their relationship was discovered and abruptly ended when Josh attended a birthday celebration for one of his best friends, Rachel. Rachel wanted him to be her boyfriend but when she tried to make out with Josh, he mistakenly believed that she wanted to have sex, ripped her underwear off and nearly raped her. Because he feels guilty for seducing Eve and her resulting imprisonment as well as feeling he is constantly everyone’s topic of discussion, Josh spends the next five years full of anger, deliberately isolating himself from most of the other students at his school and avoiding Rachel. He is repeatedly suspended from school for fighting but manages to continue to excel at his school work and in baseball.
Eve’s release from prison and a renewed friendship with Rachel sparks Josh to deal with his problems, and to realize he is the victim, not the seducer.
I did enjoy this book, it kept me engrossed but I kept thinking that I really wouldn’t be comfortable with my sixteen year old daughter reading it. Josh tells the details of his relationship with Eve to Rachel and it is quite titillating. To show how skillfully Eve manipulates Josh, Lyga unfolds the particulars of their relationship slowly, building sexual tension. The book also treats sexual activity among high school students as a matter of course which I found hard to come to grips with. I know that a large number of high school students do engage in sex, but I don’t want them to think that it is required or inevitable. Boy Toy was a Kirkus starred review and was a Bank Street Teen Book of the year for 2008.
I’m not sure I would have this book in a high school library; the age recommendation is 16+. That being said, a good hook would be relating the Mary Kay Letourneau story, how she had a relationship with one of her 12 year-old students, went to prison, and had his child. When she was released early on good behavior, she was forbidden to have contact with him, a condition that she disregarded. She was sent back to jail, had another child by him and when she was finally released, she married him.
