There's just something about a teacher/student relationship plot that always seems to grab me and keep me interested from start to finish. The boring black cover wasn't exactly enough to attract my attention, but in my klutziness I ran into the NEW RELEASES shelf and TAMPA happened to fall on my shoes. Of course, I had to preview the description, and EUREKA! Another forbidden teacher/student relationship book! SCORE! 
 I don't know what it is about these naughty secret relationships that is SO intriguing, but this one is about a woman in her mid to late 20's who has a fetish for 14 year old boys. It somehow relates back to her first sexual experience, at that age, and it's something that Celeste could just never shake. So, of course, she went into teaching -- eighth graders, of course, which is her ideal age bracket in every way. 
 Now, Celeste is, of course, stunningly gorgeous, and she has no problem charming her young students. Her plan is always the same -- single out one boy who still looks prepubescent, has minimal parental involvement, and can keep a secret NO MATTER WHAT. Celeste knows that she's playing with fire -- she has a husband in the police force, who serves as little more than her sugar daddy. But her full attention belongs to the one special boy in class. She will initiate sexual relations with him, engaging in secret and increasingly more dangerous sexual activities until the school year is over, and then casually cut ties before he goes through puberty and becomes completely uninteresting to Celeste. 
 Celeste knows that eventually she will be caught -- and thrown in jail -- but for now, each hidden relationship feels OH SO WORTH IT to her... 
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 The subject matter alone was almost enough to get approval from me-- but beyond this, I definitely have mixed feelings about this novel. There is certainly something fascinating about a character that seems purely horrible from start to finish, but it somehow made the story feel a bit... disappointing? I mean, I don't expect or even necessarily WANT a happily ever after, but I guess I wanted to see the teeniest bit of remorse or growth in Celeste's character. She was just so... evil?... especially in that horrific scene with Jack's father... so I think I just felt a little disconnected from her story. 
 I wouldn't recommend this to younger readers, just based on the graphic descriptions, but I do think that older readers of some of the conflicted YA taboo relationships type of books may find a similar interest in a story like TAMPA. And I definitely think that TAMPA will earn a place on my shelf (right next to TAMING THE BEAST by Emily Maguire -- and I'm ultimately not disappointed that it fell on my shoes that one klutzy day in the library! ;)