Post 1

To start off, this is a very easy read which makes me SO HAPPY. Reading through 80 pages was not as much of a burden as I thought it was going to be. As for the content of the book though, it was a little weird... Michael, the 15 year old protagonist, starts off the book saying he was diagnosed with Hepatitis and tells the story of how this woman (Hanna whom is 36) saves him when he was throwing up the first days of his sickness. After Hanna took care of him and brought him to the safety of his house and medical care, Michael was obviously forever grateful and decided he absolutely had to find her again. When he finally does, it becomes a relationship that I did not expect to happen. I know you, Mr. Shapiro, warned us about explicit material in this book but I did not expect it to be with such an immense age difference which I find pretty nasty. A FULLY developed woman in her late thirties using a boy she salvaged at the age of 15 for sex is disgusting -- in my eyes. I think stereotypically it would have been the other way around -- the man is 36 and the girl is 15, but regardless it is just wrong, in my eyes. Hanna doesn't want their relationship to be known outside of them two, which rings a warning bell to me. I have to say I'm relieved for the boy when their relationship breaks at the end of part one because I just can't wrap my finger around a 36 year old woman using a 15 year old boy for sex. The worst part is that he is actually in love with her while for her he's just a sex object, almost.