Prey by Lurlene McDaniel

[KWill20]

Before reading Prey, I was familiar with Lurlene McDaniel's work, as I have read a couple of her novels before. I usually like her style of writing. From my understanding, this novel handles a topic and writing style that McDaniel never worked with before. And unfortunately, you can tell that she took a big risk with this story. I did like this book, but I felt like there were a lot of errors, including the point of view, which is told through three different characters.

Prey stars a high school Freshmen named Ryan. Ryan is a normal teenage boy- he’s smart, has lots of friends and is trying to figure himself out. But he unfortunately has to do all of that figuring out on his own, as his mom committed suicide and his dad constantly travels for work. As he enters his first year of high school, he’s makes it well known that he is not very excited for his classes. That all changes when he meets the young, alluring new History teacher named Lori Settles. Ryan is extremely fascinated by Lori, and it turns out, Lori feels the same way about him. Soon, Lori engages with Ryan outside of school and they begin to have a sexual relationship. Ryan loves his secret relationship with Lori, but soon he understands that he can’t keep his relationship a secret for very long.


This story is told through three different points of view: Ryan’s, Lori’s, and Ryan’s best friend, Honey’s. I honestly thought that was unnecessary. Seeing the story through Honey’s point of view did not excite me at all, and at times, I even thought Ryan’s point of view wasn’t needed! To me, it felt like Ryan’s voice wasn’t very authentic, and that you could tell it was not a real teenage boy talking/going through it all.

I thought this book would of been so much better if it were just told through the eyes of Lori- she is such a round character. Seeing her reasons for being sexually active with Ryan- and other teenage boys as well- was just so interesting. She is a sick woman, very sick and manipulative, and it’s mostly because she had an abusive dad growing up. I loved getting glimpses of her childhood and her sickly past through her emotional rants.

Although hearing Lori’s voice was great, that was really the one and only thing I think this book excelled in. I feel like overall, this book lacked depth, specifically sexual depth. I know this book is for teenagers and she didn’t want it to be extremely graphic, but in my mind, she left too much for the imagination. It would of been such a more shocking/better read if she went deeper and decided to be a little more descriptive.

Again, I did like this book for the most part, but it could of been so much better. I give it 2/5 stars.