Two words stripped
Austin Pritchard of the privileged life he’s used to. The moment he
uttered the words, “I’m gay,” he realized there is no such thing as
unconditional love. Now, he’s gone from traveling the world with his
family to living on the streets trying to figure out how he’s going to
stay in school.
A chance opportunity changes everything. Austin impresses the foreman and lands a job, but even more, he catches the eye of David Becker, who is determined to teach him that true love doesn’t come with strings.
The only thing David had as a child was love. His family struggled to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. That has driven him to stay focused on his goals; become a tenured professor at a university and save enough money to build a home of his own. It’s not until he sees an insecure college student working on his new house that he realizes that he hasn’t planned on someone to share his life with. He’s about to learn that everything he’s already accomplished is nothing compared to the task of making Austin see that he is worthy of love.
A chance opportunity changes everything. Austin impresses the foreman and lands a job, but even more, he catches the eye of David Becker, who is determined to teach him that true love doesn’t come with strings.
The only thing David had as a child was love. His family struggled to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. That has driven him to stay focused on his goals; become a tenured professor at a university and save enough money to build a home of his own. It’s not until he sees an insecure college student working on his new house that he realizes that he hasn’t planned on someone to share his life with. He’s about to learn that everything he’s already accomplished is nothing compared to the task of making Austin see that he is worthy of love.
This is a story about a young college student, Austin and an
older man David. Austin has just come out to his family and returned to school
in shame. After finishing the semester and while waiting in vain for his
parents to pick him up he soon realizes that no one is coming. And his family
has disowned him, jobless, penniless and no options for the summer he packs
what he think he will need and leaves the rest in his dorm room and heads out
into the night. Walking the streets he runs into Bree and Clay, both homeless
young adults and are willing to help him navigate the streets and his new life.
David is moving back to the area, now that he has secured a teaching position
and is having a house built. Austin has
been hired on that construction site, but will the attraction be enough? Or
will Austin immaturity drive them apart?
So this was my first Sloan Johnson book, and I was really
looking forward to it but I’m not a fan of YA and Austin was just too young
mentally and physical for me. I understand his antics is what drove the story,
but at some point, enough. Kudos’s to David for putting up with it. I liked the
fact that even though Austin was given a raw deal, he never thought about
dropping out of school, although I’m not sure how realistic that is/was? I did
like the writing style and plan on picking up more of SJ books; I’ll just be
more careful and stick to older characters (if she has any?)
As a reviewer, maybe I should
stop having high hopes for books. The ones I have the highest hopes on seem to
crash and burn. The premise behind Teach
Me captivated me. Austin was thrown out of his family because he came out
of the closet. Forced to live on the streets, he does everything he can to keep
going to college. David is a professor who finds Austin working on his house
one day and has an undeniable attraction.
If it weren’t for a few problems,
this could have been one of my favorite books. I adored Austin. He really
worked hard to overcome the crap his father forced on him for so many years.
David was sweet, if a bit dense at times, just wanting to show Austin that
leaning on someone isn’t a bad thing. Unfortunately, their chemistry and
attraction couldn’t make it through the bumps I kept hitting.
The author interchangeably used
present and past tense, which really throws a story off. There were very few
typos or grammatical errors, so that was good. But there were some very
confusing things in the story. For instance: time jumps without giving us a
clue there’s been a jump. One moment they’ve been dating a month, the next
suddenly they’ve been together 2 months without anything really giving us an
indication of the change. And at one point they were 2 weeks into Austin’s term
at school (where David is substitute teaching a sociology course Austin is
attending – but only for a couple weeks) and then WHAM! Suddenly they were 6
weeks in without explaining why David was still teaching his class? As such,
their leaps forward in the story and in their relationship felt strange. As if
we, the readers, were missing 75% of the story.
What was there was good, but
because of what was missing, I can only give the story 2 stars. I kind of hope
the author re-writes it, filling in the gaps and bringing it back all new and
pristine with all the gaps filled in. If they do, I would definitely want to
re-read and re-review.
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