Review: Prey by Lurlene McDaniel

Prey by Lurlene McDaniel
Release Date: Feb 12, 2008
Details: 208 pages, hardcover
Source: Bought from Amazon
Series: No
Rating: 1.5 out of 5
Summary (goodreads):

A teacher is supposed to impart a love of learning and a thirst for knowledge. It’s a bit different with Ms. Lori Settles. All the kids are talking about how hot she is–and she is especially interested in Ryan Piccoli. When she starts giving Ryan extra attention, he’s feeling more than happy–at first. He’s used to being the class clown, but really he’s a loner. One day after school, the friendship with Lori Settles goes farther than he ever expected. She’s his teacher. She’s at least twice his age. Intimacy with a teacher is wrong, yet it feels so good in every way. Soon, Lori is making demands and Ryan begins to feel overwhelmed, but Ryan refuses to even admit anything is going on. Something immoral is going on and before too long the choices made will change lives forever.

I rarely give out anything under a 3, mostly because I probably would had given up on a book that I'd rate under a 3... I was interested in this book because as a child I was a big Lurlene McDaniel fan and this was something outside of her usual stories, so I decided to give it a go. As much as I hate to sound rude, I have to admit, I wish I didn't.

The teacher-student issue is something that isn't often mentioned and not something that people particularly like hearing about. I do admire that Lurlene went out of what she usually writes to talk about something more serious and something not commonly talked about. 

But the characters! Oh my, the characters. They all bothered me. The book switches between three points of views, Ryan (the main character), Lori (the teacher) and Honey (Ryan's best friend who is hopelessly in love with him). Man, where do I start! Lori hates that men her age look at her like she's a piece of meat to pounce on which was her reason for liking Ryan, because he was innocent but isn't the way she's looking at Ryan the same way men are looking at her? I didn't like her because most of the things she said didn't make sense, because she was possessive over Ryan and she would act like a child to get her way. I mean, seriously? Ryan was one of those characters I wanted to smack every three pages. The way his attitude changed and how he thought he was so much better than everyone else for keeping this secret was just ridiculous. And Honey, she was just obsessed with Ryan. Completely utterly stalkerly obsessed with him.

The plot consisted of Lori's sick thoughts, Ryan's attitude and Honey's next big stalker plan. We never find out really why Lori is the way she is, or why Ryan's really attracted to her besides her body... but at least at some point Honey stops stalking him.

While I do admire that Lurlene did talk about this subject and it was apparent that she researched this subject closely, I still ended up hating the characters. I wish there had been more there between all the characters.