The Boy Next Door by Leddy Harper
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

First of all this book made me feel uncomfortable. I did not finish it.

Kristy Abner is a vile 33 year old horrible excuse of womanhood. Harsh? NOT IN ANYWAY.

This mother of a 16 year old daughter is obsessed with her 17 year old neighbor, Ash Jenkins. Worse yet, he is stars-in-his-eyes and excitement-in-his-loins in love with her. Female 101 teaches you to not dabble in the dating pool of your own teenage daughter but Kristy is thrilled by the attention she gets from Ash and charmed by the fact that he seeks her out and fills her head with all the sweet things she has been missing. But STOP RIGHT THERE! This isn’t just an older woman taking compliments from a younger man, she is lusting for the body of a child and leading him on with coy ‘we can’t’ and phishing ‘I’m too old for you’. She’s reeling in this vulnerable kid by playing hard to get instead of of shutting him down for his own well being.

She’s a gross, disgusting, awful, creepy, pervy predatory making excuses for her behavior by laying the blame at Ash’s feet. It’s Ash is seducing her. He’s breaking down her defences. He’s making her love him. He’s a freaking kid and blaming the victim is unforgivable. Statutory assaults and sex offenses exist because desperate single mothers like Kristy try to regain a sense of self worth they lost when they were younger and just as dumb as they are now through means of using others. She is playing games of power and manipulation and she is using this underage boy’s crush on her because she is an emotional vampire.

I had thought this book would be about the taboo relationship with a tragic resolution where the next door babe would learn a life lesson he could grow from and then years later a HEA could happen. WHEN HE GREW UP. If it happens I don’t know because alarms and warning bells were going off in my head alerting me to the fact that this woman is a child predator.

There are triggers all over this book. It’s not an issue of kink or consent, this is full on child abuse. Seventeen year olds are too freaking young for a relationship with an adult woman and this woman has a daughter one year younger than her obsession and lives with the reality of the maturity level gap everyday.

No! No and NO!

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