Claire is a young pianist who wants to use the services of a new teacher. But she's the one who ends up being used.

I'm not sure this book knew what it wanted to be. It was too graphic and slow for a YA novel, but too superficial for literary fiction - and the protagonist had no agency whatsoever. I understand that Claire was a victim of grooming, but a protagonist who moves from scene to scene instead of pushing things forward is not a riveting character to read about.

I always like to finish what I start so I did make it to the ending, which was were the book showed signs of life for the first time. I really wish the rest of the book had been like the final 20%.

Thank you to Candlewick Press for the review copy of this book. All opinions below are my own.

This #ownvoices author brings a unique spin to a tale of teacher-student sexual assault that manages to hit all the right points without making an impact. On the positive side, the way the author handles racial discrimination head-on is really a gut punch to see how even members of a so-called "model minority" face stereotyping, race and colorism, and race-based expectations. This book does a good job of depicting the emotional labor cost of dealing with the race-based slights of well-meaning and oblivious white folks in a way I believe people of color will identify with and even clueless white folks can learn from.

On the other hand, this book really struggles with character development in a way that makes it feel clumsy. The only two standout characters are Claire, a sort of inspiring pianist whose real goal is just to get the hell out of dodge, and her emotionally manipulative famous piano teacher, Paul. All of the other characters feel rather like cardboard cutouts who are given an inch of personality/back story/character evolution in a way that makes them feel rather prescriptive than real. This is especially difficult because Claire is so very unlikeable.

Most of the time we're in Claire's head, she's miserable about being pestered by her mom (that's pretty normal), desperately lonely at school (even though she spends nearly 6 months rejecting overtures from ostensibly her only friend), and alternately elated or depressed about her piano playing (which she practices for six hours a day). Throughout the book, the language feels pretty unrealistic of teen speak, and Claire's lack of agency really alienates the reader. Claire is convinced she's quite ugly, and sort of longs for street harassment for validation. The men and boys she finds attractive are stumbling over themselves to tell her how gorgeous she is in a way that feels pretty off-putting. She's so docile, I don't see teens wanting to identify with her, which is a shame because the nuanced way her piano teacher breaks her down is done so very well.
Overall, I think teens will leave this book feeling pretty irritated with Claire, and I think other books like Barry Lyga's Boy Toy handle teacher sexual assault/rape in a more nuanced way.

I thought I would really enjoy this book as someone who loves books about music and the artist's life that surrounds their instrument and the world around music. I felt like this book moved far too slowly and the entire book felt completely out of the blue and felt like we got very little context.

Private Lessons is an incredibly important story to tell and read especially as predators are being exposed and held accountable in the MeToo era. It's not for the faint-hearted as it addresses sexual assault/abuse, rape and inappropriate teacher/student relationship with a minor, as well as grief over a deceased parent. This book does need a trigger warning in the beginning or somewhere in the summary. What I liked most is the passion for music, the growth, healing and taking your power back by standing up to abusers and racists. The quiet strength in Claire that she finally harnesses was what made this book.

I related to Private Lessons in a way that like the protagonist Claire, I too am a Filipino American who was born and raised in the Bay Area and used to take piano lessons as a kid. It never stuck to me like it did for Claire, and it shows in that through all she went through, she still worked hard for a scholarship to her dream school.

How I wish I had a playlist to serve as a soundtrack to reading this book! Claire may not be the most likeable character or a character the reader wishes they could be, but she felt very real. She's a teenage girl that just wants to live her life, maintain relationships, and pursue a future in music, given the circumstances she's in. Those circumstances get very complicated and the book depicts how even the brightest, goal-driven people can experience unfortunate situations that affect but ultimately not define them. The drudgery and obsession with perfection during the course of piano practice and depictions of micro-aggressions that Philippine-Americans experience sprinkled throughout the book added to the realism of Salaysay's writing. (I received an ARC from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for my honest opinion.)

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*Thank you Netgalley and the Publisher for providing me with an early copy of this book, all opinions are my own*

I started liking this book.
He has no plot, basically, we live the life of the main character with her day after day, until then no problem, but having a book just focused on the main character when she is completely irritating, rude, disrespectful, and boring make the reading experience less enjoyable.
But the main character is not even the main reason why I hated this book, the big “boom” is the reason, this “boom” is something totally unnecessary, which makes the book impossible to read and leaves our character main even more unbearable, I found this “boom” very poorly done and used only as a shock factor.
I read the last 100 pages of that book on the basis of hate and I can say firmly that it is not a book I recommend!!!

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
2.5 stars
Private Lessons intrigued me, in its discussion both of #MeToo and growing up Filipino. However, while there are some objective good points, for the most part, I found it boring and unengaging.

While it is slow in starting, I did enjoy the development of Claire’s “relationship” with her teacher, and how it develops in a way that we can both understand how she gets swept up by him, while also feeling the wrongness in the way he manipulates her.

However, otherwise, I did not particularly like Claire, as she was pretty unlikable and boring. I think younger readers might have more patience with her self-centeredness, and the coming-of-age element when she breaks free is pretty decently done.

I think this is a book that will resonate with a teen audience more, although with the caveat that it does have some heavy content (including on-page rape), so they should be made aware of that beforehand. For adult readers, I don’t know if they’ll get as much out of it, although I would recommend picking it up and giving it a try if they are interested, due to the important topics it covers.

This is a moving, engaging, realistic story about a girl finding her place. If this is something you feel comfortable and interested in reading, it handles the material with nuance, grace and awareness. However, it is also quite confronting so I would be careful when reading this, and with who you give it to. That said, Salaysay does an amazing job, with gorgeous prose and complex characters.

Private Lessons by Cynthia Salaysay is not a feel great sunshiny book. I don’t think the author intended it to be so. It’s a story about Claire, a piano protégé’ who falls prey to her instructor, Paul’s, machinations and for lack of a better word, is groomed to be taken advantage of. This is a painful story of a girl with deep insecurities whose emotions often run the gamut from sad and lonely, to jealous and harmful, both to herself and others. Claire isn’t always the most likeable of characters but the important message, especially in this month of mental health awareness is that she experiences depression and anxiety and yet, finds a way to heal herself despite the odds.

While it’s a disturbing look at a predator who takes enormous pleasure in singling out young women, manipulating and abusing them, I think it also sends a positive message to women who’ve been victims of abuse. You are not alone and there is healing. Seeing Claire’s emotional wreckage all the way through to the end emphasizes just how important this message is.

Thank you to Candlewick Press, Cynthia Salaysay, and MMB Tours for providing me with a DRC of Private Lessons in exchange for my honest review.

Content Warnings: sexual assault, death of a parent, cancer, depression, abuse

THOUGHTS
I was a bit worried actually (or maybe cautious is a better word). I wasn’t entirely sure how this book would take on sex and sexual assault. Overall, I appreciate this book. Once I got further into the story, I kept wanting to read more. I loved the musical aspect. The descriptions were gorgeous. This novel also takes on cultural differences (Claire is Filipino-American), race, and the feeling of living in the middle—you don’t feel any different from those around you, but those around you always point out how you are different.

The power dynamic between Claire and her piano teacher was one where you knew he was more at fault than he ever admitted but you also kept hesitating because of Claire’s view of him/her obsession with him and what he thought of her. I felt her internal struggle. She came out of this book much stronger than I had anticipated.

I think something that helped ease my worries to actually start reading Private Lessons was the author’s note, which I am not sure will be included in the final copy. I was hesitant to read Claire’s story, but Salaysay completely convinced me. Private Lessons is a book of discovery (of your body, of the people around you), struggling with an obsession to please, a love letter to music, and a story of quiet strength and healing.

dnf at 50%

I think this book is a classic case of it's not you, it's me.
I went into this book with certain expectations in mind, and when they weren't realised I was disappointed.

For some context, I have recently heard nothing but amazing things about the book 'My Dark Vanessa', which similarly tackles issues of a manipulative student-teacher relationship. However, because my library is shut, I was left with a yearning for a story I could not access. So when I stumbled upon this book on Netgalley, I thought it could suffice as a YA equivalent.

Private Lessons was marketed as a #MeToo book, featuring a young girl stuck in a manipulative relationship with her piano teacher. But I made it to 50% through the book with none of that occurring. I'm sure that premise still comes into play later, but I expected it to be a much larger aspect of the story than it was.

I can only speak for the first half of the novel, but from what I read it felt more like a coming of age, self discovery teen type of deal. Of course there's nothing wrong with that- but again- wrong expectations from me. I found the beginning so slow. Nothing happened.

I don't want to be overly critical of this book because it is a debut, and I didn't finish it. Similarly, I won't rate this book. The writing was well done, and had some nice prose at times particularly to do with music. I really appreciated the filipino rep too (ownvoices!), which came as a welcome surprise. I am sure many will enjoy this book, but unfortunately I wasn't one of them.

"You can't expect love. It's elusive. I bet half the time, when people show you love, you barely even know it. And when you show love, they don't either. It's always masked. People aren't ready for it"

Thank you to Candlewick Press for this ARC

Release Date: 12 May 2020

Disclaimer: I received this e-arc from the publisher and netgalley. Thanks! All opinions are my own.




Book: Private Lessons




Author: Cynthia Salaysay




Book Series: Standalone




Rating: 5/5




Diversity: Filipino American main character!




Publication Date: May 12, 2020




Genre: YA Contemporary




Recommended Age: 18+ (sex and sexual content, statutory rape TW, underage drinking, death, child grooming, drug use, abuse: emotional mental verbal and psychological, racism, language, self-harm TW, depression, gaslighting, wanting to kill a character more than Umbridge)




Publisher: Candlewick Press




Pages: 320




Amazon Link




Synopsis: After seventeen-year-old Claire Alalay’s father's death, only music has helped her channel her grief. Claire likes herself best when she plays his old piano, a welcome escape from the sadness — and her traditional Filipino mother’s prayer groups. In the hopes of earning a college scholarship, Claire auditions for Paul Avon, a prominent piano teacher, who agrees to take Claire as a pupil. Soon Claire loses herself in Paul’s world and his way of digging into a composition’s emotional core. She practices constantly, foregoing a social life, but no matter how hard she works or how well she plays, it seems impossible to gain Paul’s approval, let alone his affection.

Author Cynthia Salaysay composes a moving, beautifully written portrait of rigorous perfectionism, sexual awakening, and the challenges of self-acceptance. Timely and vital, Private Lessons delves into a complicated student/teacher relationship, as well as class and cultural differences, with honesty and grace. 




Review: This was a gorgeous book! The book does not shy from the tough points, where it shows our main character who is in love with this (for a lack of a better word) pedo who is abusing his authority to have sex with her (a minor, EW!). The book is expertly written, amazingly well detailed for world building, and the characters are engaging (and disgusting in Paul’s case). Sometimes when books say they are wrote for a certain thing (like feminism or otherwise) I find the book isn’t really embodying that movement. However, I feel like this book is a champion for the #metoo movement.




However, I felt like the book was a bit slower paced than what I usually preferred, but I think it’s intention. It makes you pause and forces you to hear Claire’s story, through the good, the bad, and the ugly.




Verdict: I recommend this as essential reading. It’s hard to read sometimes, but it’s essential to do so.

Thanks to Candlewick Press and NetGalley for the free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Private Lessons by Cynthia Salaysay follows Claire, a Filipino-American teen who plays piano. Her father, who influenced her love of music, has passed away, and Claire is trying to get into a good college by winning piano competitions. She decides to find a better piano tutor in order to succeed in those competitions, which leads her to Paul. Along the way, she meets Julia, a new friend, and has a brief relationship with Lee, who mistreats her. Paul takes advantage of Claire and she must find her self-worth and determination to suceed.

On paper, I think this book had a very good plot and themes. However, it felt like the build-up took too long and the resolution came too easy. In a handful of conversations, all of Claire's problems were handled and over with.

I will say that I've seen a lot of people dislike Claire, but I disagree. I found her a relatable, if somewhat moody, seventeen-year-old girl. I liked her character growth through the novel and like her voice.

My main issue with this book was the pacing. By being so slow to start and so quick to resolve the problems, the messages get kind of lost.

A difficult and true book that de-romanticizes the abuse so many students suffer at the hands of their teachers and mentors. The musical descriptions are often lush and make for perfect breaths of fresh air in a book full of heavy thoughts and topics.

So haunting, impactful, and real. I would recommend this to any older teen with an interest in music, own voices, and political movements. I loved the people in Claire's life- no matter how short of length of time they are present in her life, they are important and that importance is clear. Claire is learning about her sexuality and her identity at a pivotal time in any teen's life. She wants nothing more than to be loved and appreciated, but struggles. This is a perfect Me Too era story, realistically depicted, where the monster is not necessarily someone you would immediately peg as a monster. The relationship between Claire and her mother, especially as it improves, is beautiful. Also love the commentary on being an Asian-American- but wish it was more fleshed out instead of just touched upon at a few points.

I won this book in a giveaway by Candlewick Press—thank you for the ARC! I’m giving a short review, just a small collection of the thoughts I had while reading.

This is one of those reads that I struggled with a lot. On one hand, it was full of promise, and on the other, it made me so uncomfortable. Sexual exploitation is definitely a darker topic to explore, and Salaysay handled it with grace. That being said, I didn’t love how graphic some of the scenes were, and I didn’t love the narration.

Even though I felt sympathy for Claire, I didn’t like her at all. She was distinctly unkind to her best friend and her mom, and seemed to think that lacking a sense of who she was granted her the opportunity to lash out at them. We in YA talk a lot about unlikeable female characters, but this goes beyond that, into unsympathetic.

What I did like: Private Lessons did a great job of discussing socioeconomic disparities and ethnic identity. Claire’s family is Filipino, and multiple times through the novel she encounters microaggressions and judgment that resonated with me. I liked this secondary plot line that Salaysay included.

All in all: Give Private Lessons a chance, but definitely know what you’re getting into.

I thought this book had a really intriguing premise and the music backdrop added an interesting level to it, particularly due to the intense relationships that exist between teacher and student in such a competitive field.

As far as how the book handled social issues, I found the race and first generation Filipino aspects of the story more compelling than the #MeToo aspects. While the ending tied things up nicely, I felt it skimmed the surface to a large degree, especially in the jump from him being her teacher to him being more and in the resolution at the end. She lacked agency throughout and needed to be told by others what to do and how to feel.

I also struggled with Claire, mostly in how she related to others. She treated her mother and her best friend very poorly and was incredibly nonchalant about her craft which just pissed me off. She was just very egocentric and not remotely relatable.

I also thought the book was more graphic than I’d expect from a YA book. Not only is the relationship extremely inappropriate but it’s also discussed in far more detail than I’d expect for something like this, and in a way that didn’t add to the story in a substantive way.

Overall, I thought this was an okay debut, I just wanted more depth and more deftness with the character development.

'Private Lessons is the story of a seventeen-year-old girl who confuses idolisation with affection when she starts to attend lessons with a charismatic, male piano teacher, Paul Avon. She has always loved playing but things become exponentially more serious when she realises that she's desperate for even a hint of Paul's approval and her feelings begin to spiral out of hand.

This is a beautiful and heartbreaking story of a girl who becomes so obsessed with being loved that she is taken advantage of, and how she makes it through this. With a devastatingly, heartbreakingly vulnerable protagonist, this is a painful and necessary story in light of the #MeToo movement.

I think that this book is one of the most difficult things I've ever read. The writing style is easy and readable, jumping between harshly realistic whilst Claire is in the real world and beautifully poetic whilst she's playing the piano, but this book contains a lot of difficult content that is not for the faint of heart. It's the kind of thing that you don't want to read but you know you have to, and I found myself crying more than once at what Claire was going through. A lot of what happens is stuff that, as someone who has gone through my teenage years already, was so believable for me and that really hit me hard. I have thankfully never been through anything at all like what Claire has in this novel, but I know how easy it is to be swept up in trying to impress people and how quickly you can lose yourself to please others, and that made this story especially poignant.

Claire makes mistakes in this book, and normally I'd call a character out on such problematic thoughts, actions and feelings, but I can't bring myself to with her. The mistakes that she makes are not mistakes made by the author in writing the story, but very intentional reminders that Claire is only seventeen-years old and trying to fit in. She's an incredibly vulnerable, innocent young girl who is desperate to be loved and found beautiful, and that's something that both the reader and the other characters can tell about her. It's painfully believable the way others take advantage of her and, in terms of emotional connection, she is probably the character I've cared about the most so far this year.

Many of the characters in this story are bad for Claire, at least at certain points, but all of them are completely believable. Every single character in this story is going through something that is affecting their emotional or mental health, and it's so impressive to see such three-dimensional characters that aren't completely over-exaggerated. It's heartbreaking that Paul is so realistic, rather than a caricature villain, and that Claire's friends so quickly swept her into lifestyles that she wasn't comfortable with. Rather than getting annoyed at Claire for her mistakes, I wanted to protect her.

The final part of this book is, thankfully, a little easier to read. Seeing the character growth in Claire and her mother particularly, and the way they are able to leave others behind, is so important to tie this story together and Cynthia Salaysay handled this incredible well. I literally couldn't put this book down until I finished the entire thing and I'm so glad that I powered through such an uncomfortable but hopeful tale of growth and recovery.

PRIVATE LESSONS by Cynthia Salaysay | Grade: C | No spoilers ahead.
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I’m not going to lie: this one was pretty rough. I’m a sucker for relevant YA novels that have something to say. And this one fits the bill: a Filipino-American teen finds herself embedded in an extremely toxic teacher-student relationship during the #MeToo era. But this interesting premise comes crashing down around some serious downfalls in the telling of this story. First of all, I found the protagonist very grating. She felt unreal, cliché, and frankly, frustrating. Her decision making seemed completely irrational and inhuman. And this sense of unrealistic characters extended to just about all of the characters in the novel. These characters made it very hard to get connected to the story and feel any sort of empathy for what they are going through. Apart from the graphic writing of the sexual scenes that felt more like erotica than YA fiction, I did, however, feel as though the relationship between Claire and Paul was plotted out well. The vile and manipulative nature of the relationship was clear, but did not beat readers over the head with it. The sensitivity and care given in detailing this relationship is what helped keep the story relevant to modern times and current audiences. Signs like these showed the potential of a good writer peeking through. One that may simply be a little misguided in her first published work. In conclusion, I am willing to chalk this up to an initial blunder in what will possibly be an author who I will enjoy in the future. A very special thank you to @netgalley and @candlewickpress for an advanced copy of the novel. While I of course appreciated this opportunity, my review is presented without bias.

This was just boring. The writing and events of the book felt very surface level. The subjects being talked about were very serious and could have been poignant, but everything fell flat. 

I didn't feel any vulnerability in Claire. She was just walking through the motions—felt very monotonous. Obviously a teacher/student relationship is NEVER okay, but I felt like it needed to be developed more. It kind of came out of nowhere. There was so much talk about Paul (the teacher) was so manipulative and controlling, but I didn't see that at all. I think there should have been tension building as the story progressed, with the climax being the specific act that happened between Claire and Paul. Then what follows would be the fallout and Claire processing the aftermath.

I think the author wrote some beautiful prose when describing Claire's connection with music and the piano—it felt very personal. Unfortunately, the story was disorganized and lacked any depth. 

ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.