Boy Toy by Barry Lyga Book Review

Boy Toy by Barry Lyga
(Houghton Mifflin, Paperback)
Rating:

When Josh was only twelve, his teacher sexually abused him. Now it's five years later and his teacher is getting out of jail. Plus, the girl that Josh thought he lost forever is talking to him again. And all he really wants to do is graduate and move to a town where no one knows about his past.
Lyga writes about a very controversial subject in an informative and sensitive way. I sympathized with Josh because he's under the impression that having sex with his teacher was his fault. It's easy to see how a sexual abuse victim feels responsible, which is probably one point that Lyga wants to make. Boy Toy has intermittent flashbacks to when Josh was twelve...some of them have very graphic content so I would only recommend this for mature audiences. That being said, this is a really good book because it takes a disturbing topic and shows how friends and family play a big part in helping an abused person to recover. I give this book four stars because I hardly ever read disturbing books because I don't care for the graphic content, but this book made a positive impression despite the heavy topic.