Review: Tampa By: Alissa Nutting

Tampa by Alissa Nutting
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Enter the mind of Celeste Price, a sociopath, a woman filled with lies and fantasies, a woman who put herself as a middle school teacher to be with her prey. She is complicated and yet only driven by the need to feed sexually off fourteen year old boys. At times I felt for her, but then she would just have no redeeming qualities that the reader could hold on to. Yet, you can't hate a shark for going into a frenzy when blood is in the water and that is just what you are reminded of in Celeste.
Married, wealthy, beautiful, with an education, Celeste moves forward picking a child from one of her English classes. She has it all worked out, from where to go, to already paying for prepaid cell phones - almost like a serial killer with a kill room already done shopping for the bleach. She is driven by youth, her need to hold it, to recreate it in herself, to discover an innocence already gone from within her. There is also a cat and mouse game inside her head, from the one she chooses, to actually getting caught - it is like she has to be the smartest, the one with the plan and the right words to get out of every situation, and it is all there on the tip of her tongue, waiting.
I also saw in these pages a take on society. How appropriate to choose a young beautiful woman to be the predator and what society turns a blind eye to or chooses to look upon without the same disdain and judgement of a male. These are issues definitely in need for discussion, but the answers won't come from this book, only more questions.
You might not like the subject matter, but the writing is amazing. Paragraphs filled with descriptive narratives that leave you immersed into the world of Tampa.

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