Book Review: The Teacher | Freida McFadden

This is a spoiler-free review of The Teacher by Freida McFadden. If you are looking for spoilers for The Teacher and more information about the ending and my thoughts, head over to my spoiled-review where I unpack all of the disturbing twists!

I read Freida McFadden’s new thriller, The Teacher, nearly two weeks ago and I’ve been stumped about how to review it. If you’ve read Freida before, her books aren’t deep or particularly well-crafted, but they are like popcorn in a microwave with how many twists they have. Her books are a lot of fun and there’s a reason she’s become popular all across social media. A blindside queen!

This brings me to the current book, The Teacher. This book is a content warning start to finish, but I feel I’ll venture into spoiler territory so I’m going to start with a spoiler free review, but also wrote a spoiled-review on a separate page for those that are scratching their heads over this one.

What is The Teacher about?

Eve is a high school math teacher who is stuck in a predictable, boring, passion-less marriage with a fellow teacher, Nate. English teacher Nate is the hot teacher at the high school with a passion for poetry. He and Eve are in a routine. They have sex exactly once per month on a Saturday. Eve manages to get her jollies another way—buying extremely expensive shoes that she cannot afford on a teacher’s salary and that she hides from her husband Nate (and having an affair with the shoe salesman, Jay).

Addie is anxious to return to school for her junior year after the events of the year prior. Her sophomore math teacher spent extra time helping her to study and pass her math class, but eventually the extra time he was spending with Addie caused some eyebrows to raise and he was forced to resign. Now the entire school thinks she was sleeping with her math teacher and Addie is ostracized by everyone, even her former best friend Hudson.

Addie’s new English teacher is kind to her, though. Nate encourages her poetry and even gets to know her. It doesn’t hurt that he’s insanely attractive, or that he defends her to his wife after Addie is caught cheating on a math test. Eve knows Addie can’t be trusted, but neither can her husband. No one knows the real Addie or the real Nate, and Eve is determined to show who they are…

What did I think?

This was a fine thriller. I thought some things were more predictable than others. I didn’t love that grooming and inappropriate relationships with minors was a prominent part of the book. In particular, some of the “twists” relied on these things which made them feel icky rather than shocking. If you’re worried that’s a spoiler, it really isn’t. McFadden makes it clear what is going on in that arena early on. The bigger mystery is which characters are who they say they are, and which ones are liars. Those are the sorts of twists that McFadden does well.

The book is narrated by Eve and Addie and you won’t like either of them. The official teaser paints Addie as the bad character, but from the opening chapter there is no reader out there who will trust anything Eve says. I did find Eve’s habit of buying insanely expensive shoes and hiding them from her husband kind of humorous. These are two high school teachers who presumably share a bank account—I’m not sure how long she thinks she can get away with purchasing $600 footwear without him noticing.

As always with McFadden, if the reader stays mostly at the surface level, this is an enjoyable and twist-y popcorn thriller. It has a lot of plot-holes and far-fetched twists, but I think it will be entertaining to those who enjoyed her other books. I didn’t think this was one of her stronger ones. The story itself seemed to be spinning in place for quite some time until the action towards the end of the book.

Addie is painted as a manipulative person but that isn’t exactly what the reader sees. She’s bullied and ostracized by her peers. The story with her former teacher who resigned looms over the plot, and it’s unclear what exactly happened and if it was a true story or not. That part kept me guessing but I didn’t find it fun. It was kind of sad in my opinion, because it didn’t matter if Addie ended up be manipulative or not—she was still a victim who didn’t deserve what happened to her by adults in her life (or other kids).

I don’t mind a few plot holes, but one of the ones at the end was big enough to be a crater. It really bothered me, because it felt lazy. There was no way the twist actually would have worked in real life based on timing and logistics alone. The very final twist is equal parts shocking and disgusting. I’m going to head over to my spoiler review so feel free to join me if you want to get into what really happened at the end of The Teacher!