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Going through my summer challenges to pick another book before I need to start a book club book, I was specifically looking for a vacation romance. I went through my tbr once again and realized 40-Love by Olivia Dade would not only fit the vacation prompt, but also hit prompts on my other two reading challenges. However, I am a person that has to read things in order, even if they don't need to be. So I jumped back to book 1 in her There's Something About Marysburg series, Teach Me. This only covers the instagram rec prompt for Summer of Swoon.
Rose is a teacher at the local high school in Marysburg. She gets called in about a week before her summer vacation ends and is notified that a fellow teacher has retired. Martin is the new replacement, but due to some conflict between Rose and one of the board members, Martin not only gets to use her classroom during her planning periods, but was also given her honors US history class. This is a little bit of an issues since the students usually go from the honors class to the AP class, and it helps that it's with the same teacher so they can learn to trust her and how her classes are run. Martin is new to town, having moved to be closer to his daughter.
This is definitely an older romance, with Rose in her early 40s and Martin in his mid 40s. Now I'm only 32, but I'm finding myself drawn to and enjoying the more mature romances a lot lately. This was a little older than I usually read, but it was a nice change. It's just really nice to read characters that know who they are and that they can still be looking for their perfect person. Rose is frustrated about Martin in the beginning and comes off as a total Ice Queen. She knows it's not his fault, but she's still frustrated with the situation. Even more so since she has one of the highest AP attendance in the state and losing the honors class could affect future enrollment and therefore funding.
I'm not the biggest fan of enemies to lovers, so I was really happy to see that Rose starts to thaw towards Martin about the 20% mark. However there are issues and they quickly have a misunderstanding between them, mostly due to the horrible board member that caused the issues in the first place. I enjoyed how it became enemies to friends to lovers. I enjoyed the tension between them and how Martin was patient with her as much as he could be. He was so understanding. I also loved his daughter Bea. If I were to be firm on my rating it'd be more like 4.5-stars, but this book had me laughing and tearing up. It was just so feel good and nice to see two people connect and really come to understand each other. Oh and the caretaking portion was so well done. The conflict was more internal than I enjoy, but it really made a lot of sense and broke my heart. I really sympathized with Rose and how hard it is to not only let others past your defenses, but break them yourself.
I'm excited to finally get to some of Olivia Dade's other books. I've mentioned this in a couple tbr posts, but I've only read her Lovestruck Librarians series so far, but have had her other works on tbr for a while. I forgot how feel good her writing is. I'm certainly excited to continue in this series and Olivai's backlist. I know that a lot of people like the second book 40-Love, but I'm trying not to hype myself up too much.
Have you read Teach Me?
Bookishly Yours,
Stasi🍎
STATISTICS: Teach Me, Olivia Dade, ?-stars, 1 day, eBook, 276 pages, published in 2019
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