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Seventeen: A Coming of Age Story
*A gripping and powerful memoir reminiscent of Notes on a Scandal, An Education and My Dark Vanessa*
'Engaging and engrossing, frank and frankly troubling, Seventeen is a book not easily forgotten' - Karen Joy Fowler
'I can’t remember the last time, if ever, a memoir affected me as deeply as Seventeen' - John Boyne
'A powerful tale of lost youth' - Guardian
'Disturbing, powerful and important' - The Times
It’s 1992. Like every other seventeen-year-old boy, Joe has one eye on his studies, the other on his social life – smoking, Britpop, girls. He’s looking ahead to a gap year full of travel and adventure before university when his teacher – attractive, mid-thirties – takes an interest in him. It seems like a fantasy come true.
For his final two years at school, he is bound to her, a woman twice his age, in an increasingly tangled web of coercion, sex and lies. Their affair, a product of complex grooming and a shocking abuse of authority, is played out in the corridors of one of Britain’s major private schools, under the noses of people who suspected, even knew, but said nothing.
Thirty years on, this is Joe’s gripping record of the illicit relationship that dominated his adolescence and dictated the course of his life. With a heady dose of nineties nostalgia and the perfectly captured mood of those final months at school, Joe charts the enduring legacy of deceit and the indelibility of decisions made at seventeen.
'So compelling and shocking that to read it is to have it seared on to you. I felt like I was there. As gripping a memoir as you’ll find' - David Whitehouse
‘A truly impressive and important book’ - Ali Millar
'A vivid and moving story, grippingly told' - Alex Renton
'I was addicted to this book' - Lily Dunn
'Gripping [...] a powerful read' - Lucy Nichol
'Engaging and engrossing, frank and frankly troubling, Seventeen is a book not easily forgotten' - Karen Joy Fowler
'I can’t remember the last time, if ever, a memoir affected me as deeply as Seventeen' - John Boyne
'A powerful tale of lost youth' - Guardian
'Disturbing, powerful and important' - The Times
It’s 1992. Like every other seventeen-year-old boy, Joe has one eye on his studies, the other on his social life – smoking, Britpop, girls. He’s looking ahead to a gap year full of travel and adventure before university when his teacher – attractive, mid-thirties – takes an interest in him. It seems like a fantasy come true.
For his final two years at school, he is bound to her, a woman twice his age, in an increasingly tangled web of coercion, sex and lies. Their affair, a product of complex grooming and a shocking abuse of authority, is played out in the corridors of one of Britain’s major private schools, under the noses of people who suspected, even knew, but said nothing.
Thirty years on, this is Joe’s gripping record of the illicit relationship that dominated his adolescence and dictated the course of his life. With a heady dose of nineties nostalgia and the perfectly captured mood of those final months at school, Joe charts the enduring legacy of deceit and the indelibility of decisions made at seventeen.
'So compelling and shocking that to read it is to have it seared on to you. I felt like I was there. As gripping a memoir as you’ll find' - David Whitehouse
‘A truly impressive and important book’ - Ali Millar
'A vivid and moving story, grippingly told' - Alex Renton
'I was addicted to this book' - Lily Dunn
'Gripping [...] a powerful read' - Lucy Nichol
365 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 20, 2023
36 people are currently reading
1843 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 119 reviews
September 7, 2025
In 1992, this book’s author, Joe Gibson, was 17 years old and a new student at a posh school. Like the other boys, he had a crush on languages teacher Miss P. In her mid-thirties but much younger looking, with shiny auburn hair, she was the object of many teenage fantasies. Then something happened that was beyond Joe’s wildest dreams—Miss P made a move on him. Soon, the two began hooking up in secret and Joe was madly in love. But Miss P could also be jealous and controlling. Joe began to drift away from his friends and miss out on normal teenage experiences. And Miss P urged him to give up on his post-high-school dreams so he could stay in their town and be with her.
This book was SO good. It portrays the experience of grooming in such a complex and nuanced way. Joe genuinely has feelings for Miss P but he is so clearly not ready for an adult relationship, and we see how unfair it is for him to be thrust into one. The juxtaposition of his relationship with his same-aged ex-girlfriend and his romance with Miss P really hammers home the difference between a teenager being in a sexual relationship with a peer and being in one with an adult. We also see how deeply flawed Miss P is, and get a sense of why her relationships with her own peers never worked out. She is abusive and immature, prone to wild jealously and swings of emotion, while still publicly putting forward the image of a beloved teacher. The ending of the book, where we learn of what became of the author’s relationship with Miss P, absolutely shocked me.
Though this book is not YA and does contain sexual content, I actually think it would be a great one for older teens to read. It really hammers home the ways a grooming relationship can feel consensual at the time while ultimately being incredibly damaging. I highly recommend this book.
This book was SO good. It portrays the experience of grooming in such a complex and nuanced way. Joe genuinely has feelings for Miss P but he is so clearly not ready for an adult relationship, and we see how unfair it is for him to be thrust into one. The juxtaposition of his relationship with his same-aged ex-girlfriend and his romance with Miss P really hammers home the difference between a teenager being in a sexual relationship with a peer and being in one with an adult. We also see how deeply flawed Miss P is, and get a sense of why her relationships with her own peers never worked out. She is abusive and immature, prone to wild jealously and swings of emotion, while still publicly putting forward the image of a beloved teacher. The ending of the book, where we learn of what became of the author’s relationship with Miss P, absolutely shocked me.
Though this book is not YA and does contain sexual content, I actually think it would be a great one for older teens to read. It really hammers home the ways a grooming relationship can feel consensual at the time while ultimately being incredibly damaging. I highly recommend this book.
July 24, 2023
While it feels almost wrong to have to give this book a rating, it certainly deserves 5 stars. It is a devastatingly evoked account of being a child subjected to abuse by a teacher, a tightly constructed story that somehow still manages to floor you, even when you're become used to its central premise. The moment I cannot stop thinking about writing this review is when 'Joe' turns up at his teacher's house before their first 'date' and because he is – of course – a child brings some corner shop daffodils and a packet of mini eggs to dinner.
My only comment isn't a criticism, but almost a plea to the author: what happened next? The book concludes in 2010, with his dawning awareness of the abuse he suffered over seventeen years. It left me wanting to know what happened to Ali and if she was ever able to understand any of what she did, how their children deal with the fact of their parents' relationship, how he explained this book's publication to his family and friends, and frankly, how he's rebuilt his life in the thirteen years since the book's conclusion. Please write another book. I will buy it.
My only comment isn't a criticism, but almost a plea to the author: what happened next? The book concludes in 2010, with his dawning awareness of the abuse he suffered over seventeen years. It left me wanting to know what happened to Ali and if she was ever able to understand any of what she did, how their children deal with the fact of their parents' relationship, how he explained this book's publication to his family and friends, and frankly, how he's rebuilt his life in the thirteen years since the book's conclusion. Please write another book. I will buy it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 27, 2023
Joe is just like any other 17 year old boy, attending school in London, when one of his teachers—35 year old Miss P, or Ali—takes an interest in him.
The formatting of the short chapters and Gibson’s prose, reading like fiction, make this memoir an addictive read. It’s wild to think that in 1992, when all of this was happening in Joe’s life, that it wasn’t an illegal act.
I have some grievances with this book though. The synopsis made it seem as if this is a story about “an abuse of power” and while I am not disagreeing, I feel like what you see is not what you get here. The entire book covers Joe’s two years at this prestigious school and, of course, his relationship with Miss P during his time there. Throughout the book, readers get many intensely detailed scenes of their sex life and it seemed, to me, as if Joe was almost relishing in it. We get pages upon pages of Joe detailing these two years with Miss P only to get to the last ten pages before the word “abuse” is even mentioned and then that’s it. It’s over.
While I very much enjoyed Gibson’s storytelling, I wish that we could have gotten more present day reflection from him. This is listed as memoir but memoir is supposed to include reflection on past events and there simply wasn’t any of that here. Perhaps autobiography would be a better description? Part three of the memoir is “17 years later” but it is incredibly brief and left me with more questions than I started with. When did he start to suspect that what happened was abuse? How did that affect him? How did he cope with it (therapy, etc)? What are his thoughts on it now? How did it shape who he became?
Overall, I have no regrets that I read it and I’m glad that Gibson wrote it; I’m sure that it helped him to get his story out there. I hope that it helps those that are in a similar position understand what abuse looks like and that it encourages them to speak out.
The formatting of the short chapters and Gibson’s prose, reading like fiction, make this memoir an addictive read. It’s wild to think that in 1992, when all of this was happening in Joe’s life, that it wasn’t an illegal act.
I have some grievances with this book though. The synopsis made it seem as if this is a story about “an abuse of power” and while I am not disagreeing, I feel like what you see is not what you get here. The entire book covers Joe’s two years at this prestigious school and, of course, his relationship with Miss P during his time there. Throughout the book, readers get many intensely detailed scenes of their sex life and it seemed, to me, as if Joe was almost relishing in it. We get pages upon pages of Joe detailing these two years with Miss P only to get to the last ten pages before the word “abuse” is even mentioned and then that’s it. It’s over.
While I very much enjoyed Gibson’s storytelling, I wish that we could have gotten more present day reflection from him. This is listed as memoir but memoir is supposed to include reflection on past events and there simply wasn’t any of that here. Perhaps autobiography would be a better description? Part three of the memoir is “17 years later” but it is incredibly brief and left me with more questions than I started with. When did he start to suspect that what happened was abuse? How did that affect him? How did he cope with it (therapy, etc)? What are his thoughts on it now? How did it shape who he became?
Overall, I have no regrets that I read it and I’m glad that Gibson wrote it; I’m sure that it helped him to get his story out there. I hope that it helps those that are in a similar position understand what abuse looks like and that it encourages them to speak out.
November 26, 2023
3.5 stars rounded up. It’s September 1991 and sixteen year old Joe has just started at a new private school. He and his parents have enthusiastic plans for his future. Yet things go awry when Miss P, a thirty five year old teacher, starts to take an interest in him. And so begins a torrid love affair, right under the noses of everyone at school. It’s only now, many decades later, that the author feels able to recount his memories of that time and the resulting way it shaped his life.
This was at times a difficult and awkward read. The grooming being carried out by a woman feels both unusual and disturbing. Miss P is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a sexual predator of the finest. Her coercive control is seamless and masterful, she’s manipulative and calculating and I watched the story unfold with a sense of deep dismay, particularly towards the end of the book.
Written in short choppy chapters, this is a book you’ll race through, so compelling you’ll find it difficult to put down.
This was at times a difficult and awkward read. The grooming being carried out by a woman feels both unusual and disturbing. Miss P is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a sexual predator of the finest. Her coercive control is seamless and masterful, she’s manipulative and calculating and I watched the story unfold with a sense of deep dismay, particularly towards the end of the book.
Written in short choppy chapters, this is a book you’ll race through, so compelling you’ll find it difficult to put down.
February 26, 2023
An outstanding memoir - uncomfortable, nostalgic, painful and powerful. Joe’s words remember a cruelly stolen 90s youth, and the contrast between his 17 year old self and the world he became trapped in is painfully apparent. This is the story of coercive control and abuse of a 17 year old boy by his 35 year old teacher.
Joe’s reference points (music, clothes) and preferences (food, drink) as well as the guilt he feels for lying to his family and friends just reinforces how out of his depth, increasingly isolated and trapped he is. The anecdotes we hear about his friends remind us of the freedom he has lost. A must-read for 2023.
Thank you to the publisher for an early copy.
Joe’s reference points (music, clothes) and preferences (food, drink) as well as the guilt he feels for lying to his family and friends just reinforces how out of his depth, increasingly isolated and trapped he is. The anecdotes we hear about his friends remind us of the freedom he has lost. A must-read for 2023.
Thank you to the publisher for an early copy.
May 31, 2024
Det føles virkelig forkert at give den fem stjerner but alas, here we are.
Jeg er så ked af, at der er nogle mennesker, der desværre går igennem det som Gibson er gået igennem, men vil også samtidig bifalde hans mod for at dele sin historie og blandt andet vise, at kvinder også kan være sexual predators 💔
Jeg er så ked af, at der er nogle mennesker, der desværre går igennem det som Gibson er gået igennem, men vil også samtidig bifalde hans mod for at dele sin historie og blandt andet vise, at kvinder også kan være sexual predators 💔
August 10, 2023
A powerful, uncomfortable and gripping true story. This is a book that will stay with me; an eye opening and important read that gives an insight into a teenager’s mind and the way in which female coercive control is so easily overlooked and underestimated.
Joe Gibson (pseudonym has been used) has been incredibly brave to bare all by telling us his compelling and shocking story, and although some of his most important formative years were taken from him, I hope writing this book has brought him some healing ❤️✨
Joe Gibson (pseudonym has been used) has been incredibly brave to bare all by telling us his compelling and shocking story, and although some of his most important formative years were taken from him, I hope writing this book has brought him some healing ❤️✨
October 1, 2023
3.5* An uncomfortable read in two distinct ways. Whilst the latter half is a progressively more distressing account of a coercive relationship, the first half is distressing in that it strays uncomfortably close to being a soft-porn fantasy for teen boys and ephebophiles. I almost DNF - not from any prudishness, but more because the unnecessary titillation began to make the whole exercise feel more like one of prurience than of insight.
December 16, 2023
This was surprisingly compelling. A memoir that read like a breathless thriller-cum-romance - what's not to like.
A teacher starts a relationship with her 17-year-old student. The bizarre power dynamics, emotional coercion, and feelings of complicity that follow are equal parts fascinating and sickening to read.
Well structured and narrated in an easy and sometimes funny prose, Seventeen is a warning to schools and society as a whole to do better.
A teacher starts a relationship with her 17-year-old student. The bizarre power dynamics, emotional coercion, and feelings of complicity that follow are equal parts fascinating and sickening to read.
Well structured and narrated in an easy and sometimes funny prose, Seventeen is a warning to schools and society as a whole to do better.
January 8, 2024
HAN. VAR. SYTTEN. ÅR. GAMMEL
Hun putter virkelig ad i hvad
Hun putter virkelig ad i hvad
March 2, 2024
4.5 stars
November 28, 2024
A horrible read. I was wincing while reading.
December 19, 2023
Boy 17 has affair with his teacher she is 35. This is his memoir, his feelings about it all seventeen years later when he is 34.
If the law was as it is now , when they had their affair she would have been arrested for a criminal act. He leaves her at the age of 34, perhaps all the failings in his life are her fault. He leaves her with two children to raise and goes to live on a boat.
The lens he views his story through is one of abuse, he was the victim of a abusive teacher.
in parts it sulky and finger pointing on a life that he seems to say if it were not for her he would have been at Oxford would have been a success, have had good times with his mates. its like he was four years old and has been abducted, not a 6 foot randy seventeen year old who already had sex.
its interesting told from the boy's point of view, in a way I think what happened beyond his failure to be a husband, is that it was an affair that belonged to a certain season and possibly they fell out of love.
The idea he missed out on his adolescence, beers with his mates in the pub, is a great myth I don't believe there are any great times he has missed out on. Nothing was taken from him, he had a great time, they had a wonderful affair they had fun, they had laughter.
Basically adolescence is I think something people are happy to miss out on. and in fact he is envied being the lover of this beautiful Spanish teacher.
She was wild and fun and sexy and to think of himself as 'abused, through the lens of a abused person, in this new world where all retrospective experiences are abuse to us, is a pity for his memories. rather he should think it was good which clearly it was .
Now at 34 he's burned out, living on a boat on a river with his dog.
Perhaps he would have failed Oxford anyway. The way he speaks of his studies in German having to regurgitate stuff for exams shows he really wasn't finding it very enlivening.
She did behave a bit like a cat who scooped out a fish she liked the shiny colors of from the waters. She should perhaps have put him back in the waters. She didn't put him back in the water she decided to keep him.
I do think he was too young. but would his life have been better otherwise? I doubt it, A capacity for imaginative adventure, that was bestowed on him by his fairy tale lover. He was tutored in love. and she lightened a lot of things in his life. She found him a mess of tears and pain and made him happy.
I think in terms of nature there is a time and season for everything, sex between generations, if there are children the perspective is difficult, its best really to be with someone your own age if you plan a family. Old men die, and young men complain it was a criminal activity when taken from their adolescent perches and given lot of love which they so happy about at the time.
He feels 17 years later it all catches up with him as he was not fully formed and that he was robbed of his growth. He had to make money there was a mortgage, the responsibility of being a father and a dad. Perhaps in the way though he did find his way to becoming who he was to be , with his book and writing. That probably is another gift of his lover awakening him to questioning what might otherwise have been a very dull life in which all that was in him slept.
In my view she was apple pie for him and cake too.
Seeing his life through the lens of himself as as a victim and her retrospectively as a kind of psychopath criminal who preyed on him is not the only lens to view it through, for in his memoir he tells how when she arrived anywhere the men practically wilted, we know she was lovely with a flat tummy and green eyes and a flair for dress.
His life before her seemed a yawn a minute, you could see why any adolescent would leave it for a swing on the wilder shores of love. He had a ball and that's how he should remember it, he loves his kids and he's a young father who can be young with them.
Sometimes stars explode in our sky should we say no stars for I have homework to do. or should we take our stars? Invariably I think we reach for the sparkers.
We may not know what will be when we choose the unknown sparkler but it is a choice.
He was spellbound he says and in a wonderful way. That's another lens he could look at it through in memory.
If the law was as it is now , when they had their affair she would have been arrested for a criminal act. He leaves her at the age of 34, perhaps all the failings in his life are her fault. He leaves her with two children to raise and goes to live on a boat.
The lens he views his story through is one of abuse, he was the victim of a abusive teacher.
in parts it sulky and finger pointing on a life that he seems to say if it were not for her he would have been at Oxford would have been a success, have had good times with his mates. its like he was four years old and has been abducted, not a 6 foot randy seventeen year old who already had sex.
its interesting told from the boy's point of view, in a way I think what happened beyond his failure to be a husband, is that it was an affair that belonged to a certain season and possibly they fell out of love.
The idea he missed out on his adolescence, beers with his mates in the pub, is a great myth I don't believe there are any great times he has missed out on. Nothing was taken from him, he had a great time, they had a wonderful affair they had fun, they had laughter.
Basically adolescence is I think something people are happy to miss out on. and in fact he is envied being the lover of this beautiful Spanish teacher.
She was wild and fun and sexy and to think of himself as 'abused, through the lens of a abused person, in this new world where all retrospective experiences are abuse to us, is a pity for his memories. rather he should think it was good which clearly it was .
Now at 34 he's burned out, living on a boat on a river with his dog.
Perhaps he would have failed Oxford anyway. The way he speaks of his studies in German having to regurgitate stuff for exams shows he really wasn't finding it very enlivening.
She did behave a bit like a cat who scooped out a fish she liked the shiny colors of from the waters. She should perhaps have put him back in the waters. She didn't put him back in the water she decided to keep him.
I do think he was too young. but would his life have been better otherwise? I doubt it, A capacity for imaginative adventure, that was bestowed on him by his fairy tale lover. He was tutored in love. and she lightened a lot of things in his life. She found him a mess of tears and pain and made him happy.
I think in terms of nature there is a time and season for everything, sex between generations, if there are children the perspective is difficult, its best really to be with someone your own age if you plan a family. Old men die, and young men complain it was a criminal activity when taken from their adolescent perches and given lot of love which they so happy about at the time.
He feels 17 years later it all catches up with him as he was not fully formed and that he was robbed of his growth. He had to make money there was a mortgage, the responsibility of being a father and a dad. Perhaps in the way though he did find his way to becoming who he was to be , with his book and writing. That probably is another gift of his lover awakening him to questioning what might otherwise have been a very dull life in which all that was in him slept.
In my view she was apple pie for him and cake too.
Seeing his life through the lens of himself as as a victim and her retrospectively as a kind of psychopath criminal who preyed on him is not the only lens to view it through, for in his memoir he tells how when she arrived anywhere the men practically wilted, we know she was lovely with a flat tummy and green eyes and a flair for dress.
His life before her seemed a yawn a minute, you could see why any adolescent would leave it for a swing on the wilder shores of love. He had a ball and that's how he should remember it, he loves his kids and he's a young father who can be young with them.
Sometimes stars explode in our sky should we say no stars for I have homework to do. or should we take our stars? Invariably I think we reach for the sparkers.
We may not know what will be when we choose the unknown sparkler but it is a choice.
He was spellbound he says and in a wonderful way. That's another lens he could look at it through in memory.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 30, 2024
A deeply uncomfortable memoir of a teenager ”seduced” (groomed and taken advantage of) by his teacher.
Read
April 28, 2024seventeen is a shocking, raw, and uncomfortable memoir. whilst i thought this was a harrowing insight into a strategic and manipulative abuse of power, the majority of the memoir is dominated by extremely detailed scenes of their sexual relationship, which genuinely read like a teen boy fantasy, and was difficult to read. the only real reflections of this abuse occurred in the last few chapters, but this was brief and could’ve been much stronger. i was expecting some comprehensive interrogation of this abuse, such as his teacher’s intentions, or joe’s later observations and reflections of his experience, but we didn’t get that.
September 29, 2023
A vivid and disturbing read (or listen - the audiobook is excellent) about a relationship/abuse of power between Joe, a seventeen-year-old sixth form pupil, and a woman twice his age, Miss P, or Ali, his Spanish teacher. It doesn’t have Nabokov’s poetic veil to cloud its harrowing subject matter, but the narrator’s increasing doubts, moments of weirdness, interspersed with the stereotypical depictions of a first love, create a similar effect on the reader - shock, nausea, and, most of all, pity for the victim - except greater, because his story is true.
January 27, 2025
Brilliantly horrifying. Eye opening to read about coercion, manipulation and down right abuse from a female teacher to a male student when so often it is the other way around. Based in a time when the laws were different but the seemingly age old story of private schools brushing things under the carpet . . . A must read
February 11, 2025
An 8.5/9. The start was slow and the ending was sad and drab - although I appreciate it was the reality of the matter. I wanted it to all end happily and that impacted my final mark. Still a top 25/50 book. Would consider a first edition.
August 10, 2023
Thank you to tandem collective
And simon and schuster for sending me a copy, and for having me on the Tandem readalong!
Please note that the trigger warnings for this book are child sexual abuse, grooming, cohesion, manipulation, and cohersive behaviour.
My thoughts:
A gut wreching read. The abuse that Joe suffered when he was seventeen at the hands of his teacher is heartbreaking. When reading, you can see how manipulative, gaslighting, and abusive Miss P is, and how at 17, Joe is very vulnerable and is just a child. You kind of forget at different stages that he is 17, but he then does something that shows his age, and my heart breaks for him. Being 17 is very hard, and you read the pressure Joe is under with what is happening with Miss P and her manipulated ways, keeping it all a secret and lying to friends and family, and school and you just want to hug him. Joe was completely robbed of his teenage years, and he would never get those back. My heart breaks for him.
It is written in a more fiction than a non-fiction narrative, which I loved, but because it is written that way, I kept on forgetting that this is non-fiction. The book completely gripped me, I couldn't stop reading (the short chapters helped), I basically inhaled the book in 4 days.
The last chapter just left me speechless and made me go "wow" out loud, and I cried. I will never have words for that chapter.
It makes me sick that people in authority use their position to abuse children. I cried when I read the afterword, which discusses the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
Thank you, Joe, for sharing your story with the world. It was very brave. I can not imagine how hard that must have been, and I will not forget it. My thoughts go out to everyone who has been abused 🤍
And simon and schuster for sending me a copy, and for having me on the Tandem readalong!
Please note that the trigger warnings for this book are child sexual abuse, grooming, cohesion, manipulation, and cohersive behaviour.
My thoughts:
A gut wreching read. The abuse that Joe suffered when he was seventeen at the hands of his teacher is heartbreaking. When reading, you can see how manipulative, gaslighting, and abusive Miss P is, and how at 17, Joe is very vulnerable and is just a child. You kind of forget at different stages that he is 17, but he then does something that shows his age, and my heart breaks for him. Being 17 is very hard, and you read the pressure Joe is under with what is happening with Miss P and her manipulated ways, keeping it all a secret and lying to friends and family, and school and you just want to hug him. Joe was completely robbed of his teenage years, and he would never get those back. My heart breaks for him.
It is written in a more fiction than a non-fiction narrative, which I loved, but because it is written that way, I kept on forgetting that this is non-fiction. The book completely gripped me, I couldn't stop reading (the short chapters helped), I basically inhaled the book in 4 days.
The last chapter just left me speechless and made me go "wow" out loud, and I cried. I will never have words for that chapter.
It makes me sick that people in authority use their position to abuse children. I cried when I read the afterword, which discusses the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
Thank you, Joe, for sharing your story with the world. It was very brave. I can not imagine how hard that must have been, and I will not forget it. My thoughts go out to everyone who has been abused 🤍
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 25, 2024
My first ever five⭐️! Listened to da audiobook and loved it. Poor joes life could’ve been so much better if it wisna for yun beast oh a wife 😩 horrible to think it’s a true story. I recommend abody to read/listen to dis een
February 14, 2024
Jeg er speechless. Ad.
May 8, 2025
A pretty troubling read about sexual abuse within a school environment that, in the first half, seemed almost smut-like in the author's description of the sex life he had when he was 17 with his 35 year old spanish teacher. Realised by the second half: that is the point - he couldn't see what was wrong abt the relationship because he was a child and to him he was getting to shag his hot teacher !! The final chapter was really shocking but also not surprising i guess, but wish it was fleshed out a lil more than two or three pages about his life after school
March 19, 2024
An engaging and sobering anti-love story. The narrator’s growing excitement runs alongside the reader’s increasing sense of unease, and it’s sad but very believable that this particular set of circumstances was allowed to flourish in the margins.
February 8, 2024
Poor Joe!!! 😩 such a good read!
February 29, 2024
4.5 ⭐️
Read
March 28, 2024More research for my WIP. Definitely very readable, but somehow unsatisfying as it feels a bit hastily summed up in the end. I imagine it was cathartic and important for the author to write.
September 11, 2025
The problem with books like this is that they are not simply review proof they are criticism proof. It is a memoir of an abusive relationship, though the account, in its early stages, drifts uncomfortably close to titillation. What makes the story different, and dare I say unique and bordering on the unbelievable, is that the affair between a 17 year old student and thirty five year old teacher is followed by 17 years of unhappy marriage for the two of them (you thought I was going to say it was unique because it involved a female teacher and a male student - just shows that may be old but I am not stupid). The 17 years post school are probably the most destructive and wrong, but of course they only happen because of the initial abuse - and let us be clear the abuse is not simply one of age but of a teacher taking advantage a pupil. It is always wrong, it doesn't matter the age of the student, though the longer the student has known the teacher the more compromising it is, but being a teacher renders everything toxic.
But do I want to read a memoir that is as much catharsis as literature? No. That doesn't mean it is badly written, but the writing isn't what is important. It is the story, and the fact the story in all its essentials is true. A writer can use his experiences and create art - 'All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way' - how much personal experience did Tolstoy pack into that sentence. The same goes for Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Thomas Mann and so many others. Which is why Shakespeare, Austen and Dickens still speak to us because though circumstances may change, honest and real insights don't.
No one will read this book in a dozen years let alone a hundred or two. Why waste time on what you know - explore the ineffable.
But do I want to read a memoir that is as much catharsis as literature? No. That doesn't mean it is badly written, but the writing isn't what is important. It is the story, and the fact the story in all its essentials is true. A writer can use his experiences and create art - 'All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way' - how much personal experience did Tolstoy pack into that sentence. The same goes for Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Thomas Mann and so many others. Which is why Shakespeare, Austen and Dickens still speak to us because though circumstances may change, honest and real insights don't.
No one will read this book in a dozen years let alone a hundred or two. Why waste time on what you know - explore the ineffable.
July 25, 2023
It’s 1992. Like every other seventeen-year-old boy, Joe has one eye on his studies, the other on his social life – smoking, Britpop, girls. He’s looking ahead to a gap year full of travel and adventure before university when his teacher – attractive, mid-thirties – takes an interest in him. It seems like a fantasy come true.
First things first, this memoir is incredibly well written but I honestly don’t know how to review or recommend this story.
You are reading from the perspective of seventeen year old Joe, who in his final two years of education starts a whirlwind relationship with his teacher almost double his age.
You get so engrossed in the telling of this story that you sometimes forget this actually happened and then it feels like a punch to the gut.
There are so many times in this book where you see the manipulative actions the teacher used on Joe and you just want to scream “run” and with each turn of the page you’re hoping he comes to his senses and escapes his captor.
This is a topic that does need to be discussed and “Seventeen” does this in a way that shows the real life impacts this has on a person, showing how they go to where they are and the tactics used to trap them.
This book gave very obvious “My Dark Vanessa” vibes, but that book was all about shock and awe and was quite disgusting whereas ‘Seventeen’ has a very mature attitude towards the situation where you can fully immerse yourself into the mind of a 17 year old boy.
This memoir is heartbreaking as you read through Joe’s recollections of his past and how it’s formed his life years later and raises a lot of red flags for behaviour most of us might be privy too when we’ve decided to date older people when we were all much younger.
I would recommend this book as it tackles the conversation of abuse of power/grooming much better than other books, but this might be because this has come from the authors lived experience which is then a reason I wouldn’t recommend it as it’s honestly quite distressing at points.
First things first, this memoir is incredibly well written but I honestly don’t know how to review or recommend this story.
You are reading from the perspective of seventeen year old Joe, who in his final two years of education starts a whirlwind relationship with his teacher almost double his age.
You get so engrossed in the telling of this story that you sometimes forget this actually happened and then it feels like a punch to the gut.
There are so many times in this book where you see the manipulative actions the teacher used on Joe and you just want to scream “run” and with each turn of the page you’re hoping he comes to his senses and escapes his captor.
This is a topic that does need to be discussed and “Seventeen” does this in a way that shows the real life impacts this has on a person, showing how they go to where they are and the tactics used to trap them.
This book gave very obvious “My Dark Vanessa” vibes, but that book was all about shock and awe and was quite disgusting whereas ‘Seventeen’ has a very mature attitude towards the situation where you can fully immerse yourself into the mind of a 17 year old boy.
This memoir is heartbreaking as you read through Joe’s recollections of his past and how it’s formed his life years later and raises a lot of red flags for behaviour most of us might be privy too when we’ve decided to date older people when we were all much younger.
I would recommend this book as it tackles the conversation of abuse of power/grooming much better than other books, but this might be because this has come from the authors lived experience which is then a reason I wouldn’t recommend it as it’s honestly quite distressing at points.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 21, 2023
The way this was written was great, but god, this was so intense. I’ve read a lot of books on this subject and this is the first to feel so raw; it’s interesting to read a narrative of such delusion and involvement, but it’s also key to keep in mind how this book will effect your mental health. Good, but a little triggering when reading in lengthy stints. A devastating and necessary read.
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