Boy Toy (by Barry Lyga)

Very good story. Very relatable to a lot of pre-teen to teenage boys.

This was a great book, but at times (i.e. when the flashbacks of Josh with Eve) I felt very uncomfortable.

This book is a wonderful look at a boy recovering from sexual abuse. The story is well-written and deals with its tender subject well. It captures the farther reaching consequences of sexual abuse, including the stigma that victims face. It is affecting and disturbing to read of Josh's experience from his "grooming" to the end of his abuse. There are extremely explicit descriptions of fondling, kissing, oral sex, pornography, and etc. which border on pornographic. There is a very disturbing scene where a grown man beats a child. There is also lots and lots of bad language. Since Josh is male, readers will likely have a different view of his experiences than they would of a girl in the same circumstances. This can be an excellent starting-point for discussions and deeper thinking. This is not a book for children, even if it is marketed to them. Boy Toy is honest and raw -not something even most older teens should be exposed to.

I thought it was a really good book. It has pretty graphic sex scenes which might make a younger reader a bit uncomfortable. The characters swear, but not a crazy amount, and most kids will already know all the words they use. I knew what the book was about before I read it, but because the blurb is fairly vague, it would be kind of confusing at the start if you didn't know what the book was about before you started reading it. The only criticism I had was that the character was constantly spouting baseball figures and always working out his batting average and slugging percentage and spouting off baseball statistics. Cause I'm English, I had no idea what the hell was going on cause I don't know all the ins and outs of baseball.