The Temptation of Adam by Dave Connis (2017)

In this history of Adam’s life, now is definitely not a high spot. Actually, it might be the lowest. His parents are divorced, he just got expelled from school, and his addiction to porn has been discovered. Combined, these three things force him to go into a outpatient rehab program, conveniently organized by the teacher he hates the most. Part of his therapy is meeting with the Knights of Vice, a group of teenagers that are battling different forms of addiction. Through the group he meets Dez, a girl who seems to have more problem than he does. Dez has set limits for Adam, the biggest one that Adam needs to beat his addiction before they can date. That part is easy said, but not easy done.

The Temptation of Adam by Dave Connis has been getting a lot of good press from authors like Nic Stone (Dear Martin) and Adam Silvera (History Is All You Left Me). These are both authors that I have a lot of admiration for, so I trusted their opinion of the book. Unfortunately, it’s safe to say that I have very different opinions from them

Honestly, I found this book to be extremely misogynistic. Right of the bat, I think the premise does nothing but harm boys. In American culture, the sexuality of teenage boys is made to frame boys as being only sex driven in their actions and something they have no emotional connection to. In the end, it dwindles boys into nothing but shallow people that want to have sex. In my opinion, this book only further perpetuated these myths not just on sex, but about addiction. In the Knights of Vice, there was only one girl in the whole group, yet there was another boy whose addiction was sex related.

Dez was the ultimate Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and this book totally admitted it. It was obvious to me that the main purpose of Dez’s character was to encourage Adam to “get better”, a problem in itself. The whole drive of this book was Adam trying to improve himself in order to get with Dez, while he should’ve been getting better for himself. The ending of Dez’s story was also a major cop out, and only reassured me that her only purpose was to push Adam through the finish line. Not only that, Dez ultimately enabled Adam.

I won’t let you know why, but Adam gets expelled for a horrifying reason that he, himself is 100% responsible for. Like, his actions have the potential to cause major problems for the people he inflicted pain on. In short, Adam is a predator.  Still, Dez tells him that it’s a no big deal. As a woman reading this book, I was appalled at how the situation was handled. I worry of the message this book sends to people who’ve been victims of harassment and sexual crimes.  

On another note, this The Temptation of Adam simply wasn’t believable. I found it extremely odd that Adam was sent to spend his mornings at a teacher’s house, who had no formal training in helping people fight addictions, to try to work through his issues instead of receiving help from actual therapists. Furthermore, for all the time they spent “talking”, they spent almost no time actually talking through Adam’s addiction.

Ultimately, I found The Temptation of Adam to send harmful messages to readers. The only positive factor I found was that it was fairly easy to read.