Lindsey Lee Johnson

This close look in at a group of financially privileged students who attend a high school in Mill Valley CA & their teachers was pretty lush. All the characters were written with brilliant insights and equally stunning blindness. The teens were given so much but not enough. They didn't have enough expected of them yet caved and wilted under the enormous expectations of them. The parents and teachers were either absent or too close in the wrong ways. Everyone's true lives and selves were show more excruciatingly on display yet obscured. They all burn bright and are tight black holes where light can't penetrate.

The dichotomy of being a teenager isn't just what's lain out here, it's that of being a human being in this modern age. A world where feverish online interaction of likes & friending has never equated to a real life true friends. Where caprice can amplify words & reposts on a screen carry over into the real world where real feelings are felt. Where a litany of posts of care & love don't even translate to a real world visit when you've almost died. These teenagers were like gladiators hurting and trying not to be hurt at every turn. It took the majority of them to learn over the course of years what Tristan Bloch learnt from them earlier on. That insecure & thoughtless people aren't to be trusted with hearts. They don't know what to do with them so will likely mistreat and break them, so put down that silver tray upon which you were about to offer yours up to them.

Each chapter is from the POV of a character so here they are ( students only but I'm not telling you their names so as not to spoil):

The Note- The one who broke my heart early on. Done in by a cruelty he didn't understand & wasn't equipped to parse or deal with.

The Pretty Boy. The predator who eventually becomes prey.

The Sleeping Woman. The catalyst, then a virtual ghost who in the end awakens to likely reinvent herself yet again at some uni on the East Coast. The one who wants to repent and atone but doesn't know how or to whom.

The Lover. The over-achiever who hits all the marks from academics to sports and still can't get her parents' attention but does get attention from another adult.

The Dime. The beautiful one with no friends, as her silence is perceived as loftiness & arrogance.

The Striver. The over-managed one who, in a final gambit to make his parents' dreams for him come true goes to illegal and wholly understandable lengths.

The Dancer. The soaring bird streaking across the sky that doesn't realize until she's fallen that gravity applies to her too.

The Ride. The slacker who realizes too late that while he was earnestly in ennui everyone else is probably going to not just pass him by but leave him behind.

The Artist. The smooth dealer who hides his intellect from others and uses it to run cons and criminal entrepreneurial endeavours.

This book also made me think about teachers in a way I never had before. I'm more impressed and confused than ever about this group of people who choose to spend their lives in the pursuit of pedagogy & mentoring in a place that most people couldn't wait to escape and never look back. They don't remain there after they graduate, they willingly return to this place & it isn't because the pay is great. Madness. Sublime and beautiful madness. Beth was a tertiary figure but was I thought the best drawn of the bunch here. I felt her portrayal was believable and expressed all the pathos that I didn't get from Molly or Doug's.

While there's plenty to engage with here, there isn't a lot in the way of rootable characters or happy endings (the only two who have them were the least objectionable or culpable in the initial incident) & I thought that was a positive. I did like all of the endings or not and they varied on level of bleakness or hopefulness. This book gave me anxiety and a nervousness that made me all the more glad it was my treadmill book so that I could burn it off. The heights and depths of teenage viciousness is obvious but this also highlights the damage they do to themselves with those acts. This book also has interesting things to say about social media and from what I've seen in the book and real life, teenagers are not the only ones doing it wrong.

In some ways this reminded me of last year's Those Girls by Lauren Saft. Just like that book, people don't necessarily become better people after they do bad things, they just come out on the other side and it's on to the next thing. Real. Definitely recommended. show less

Having spent 28 years of my life going into public schools and speaking to students from Pre-K to high schools...I have to say that I can both agree and disagree in almost equal measures with this teacher. This is a deep dark look into the hearts and minds of Middle School students and their teachers in California’s wealthy Marin County. While this may be the experience of some students...I don’t believe that it defines every student's experience or for that matter every parent of this show more influential county. I am 2,500 miles away from Marin County, California but there are counties and school districts in my state of Michigan that also have school districts with wealthy, above the average income families with children attending a variety of our schools. I believe that with a few exceptions, the parents are trying to raise their children to be well adjusted, contributing members of society...not rich brats spending their weekends getting high at parties, or experimenting with sex with anyone and everyone. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but even if half the things that were portrayed in this book are true of this one county...it still seemed like it was highly stereotyped and every above average income parent and child was painted with the same brush. I guess my question is, if the teacher knew so much about the students like Nick, the scam artist and Emma the party girl...who she describes as “both gifted and brilliant”...why wasn’t her efforts focused more on offering... if nothing else...a face that would listen to them more and condemn them less. I just felt dirty after finishing this.... but perhaps that was the entire idea. show less

There is some really vivid and powerful writing on display in Lindsey Lee Johnson's The Most Dangerous Place on Earth. Passages unfold with layers of beautifully constructed sentences that left me in awe. The opening chapter that is the impetus for the entire story that follows—wow. Tristan Bloch's journey will stay with me for some time.

The Most Dangerous Place on Earth is an unsettling tale. It rotates through the lives of half-a-dozen over-privileged high school students (and one show more somewhat out-of-place teacher), each with a unique take on life. In this way, it has a sort of Breakfast Club feel to it. Set in the modern age of cyber-bullying, it carries a much darker tone than such a description implies. Although the students' individual stories gel into one cohesive novel, they could easily stand alone.

Overall, I really liked the writing and the storyline, but I did struggle a bit with some of the characters and their actions. The most glaring example occurs during one of those “only in the movies” parties where everyone's drinking, making out, dancing on tables. The problem is, everyone is at this party. Everyone. Outside of small town America, I can't imagine this happening in the real world. Not every kid in high school is going to want to go to such a party and they're certainly not going to be invited or allowed in the door. So why was Dave there? Or Cally? Or Cally's friends? There were moments like this that distracted me, but when I was able to ignore the absurdity of such moments, I was pulled right back into the story.

In some ways, it seemed Johnson was horribly out of touch with the complete high school experience. And yet, in others, she seemed to understand it better than any of us ever could. She really gets into the minds of these adolescent characters. If she fails sometimes with the social constructs, she makes up for it in her understanding of the psychology. It is for these moments that The Most Dangerous Place on Earth elicits the highest praise. show less

Take a haunting walk down a high school hallway

This book is meant to be binge read, and I devoured it like a guilty pleasure. You almost feel like the characters are stereotypical, except that you remember each one of these people during your own high school experience. The author touches on the onslaught of social issues that teenagers face, from today’s bullying and hyper exposure to social media, to the classic, drugs, alcohol, partying, popularity, etc., added in with the ever growing show more pressure to succeed. Each issue presented in a way that doesn’t feel like an after-school special, yet more palatable than an MTV sitcom. I cringed as I remember my days of awkwardness and thanked my lucky stars Facebook and Instagram hadn’t yet come to fruition. Similarly, I shudder to think that my daughter will be a teenager in seven years and can’t imagine what new horrors she will have to face. You come to know each character as their lives intermingle, so different yet all the same in their insecurities and trying to find their place in the looming “real world” they will soon enter.

Even while still reading, I itched to write this review, so many thoughts swirling in my head as I nostalgically recalled my own experiences in the horrid hallways of high school. Personally, I could identify with each character in some way, wishing I could impart my own wisdom to help ease the burden on these fictional souls. You want to scream at them, “No, stop, don’t!” Teachers dealing with that fine line between friend and professionalism, teetering as their hearts go out to kids that think their adults. Wanting to reach an unreachable age while maintaining proper distance, letting them know they’ve been there and survived, but not without their own invisible scars.

The Most Dangerous Place on Earth poignantly pegs the inner turmoil of adolescence, stirring up memories of a time where you wanted nothing but to break free; remembering why you don’t ever want to go back. show less