Title: Just Like That
Series: Albin Academy: Book One
Author: Cole McCade
Publisher: Carina Press
Length: 336 Pages
Category: Contemporary Romance
At a Glance: Overall, I appreciated that the author’s voice served the story he told in a complementary way, but in the end, I think my expectations exceeded what was delivered.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: Summer Hemlock never meant to come back to Omen, Massachusetts…
But with his mother in need of help, Summer has no choice but to return to his hometown, take up a teaching residency at the elite Albin Academy—and work directly under the man who made his teenage years miserable.
Professor Fox Iseya.
Forbidding, aloof, commanding: psychology instructor Iseya is a cipher who’s always fascinated and intimidated shy, anxious Summer. But that fascination turns into something more when the older man challenges Summer to be brave. What starts as a daily game to reward Summer with a kiss for every obstacle overcome turns passionate, and a professional relationship turns quickly personal.
Yet Iseya’s walls of grief may be too high for someone like Summer to climb…until Summer’s infectious warmth shows Fox everything he’s been missing in life.
Now both men must be brave enough to trust each other, to take that leap.
To find the love they’ve always needed…
Just like that.
Review: Carina Press’s new Carina Adores line pays homage to some of the tropiest tropes in the Romance genre. In the case of author Cole McCade’s Just Like That, readers are offered up some familiar favorite themes such as an age gap, the grumpy one falling for the soft one, the former student/teacher relationship, as well as mutual hurt/comfort in the romance that develops between Summer Hemlock and Professor Fox Iseya, like the snap of a finger, just like that. Did it work for me? … Yes and no.
One of the things that stood out to me is that Just Like That reads like it might have wanted to be something other than a simple contemporary romance, with some maybe not-so-subtle inclusions as the Albin Academy in Omen, Massachusetts, Summer Hemlock, Fox Iseya, but that also could be, and likely is, my own interpretation of these symbolisms rather than what the author actually intended. It was not lost on me, though, that I kept anticipating something out-of-the-ordinary to happen, and with some of those ideations stuck in my head, it was difficult to then watch the academy be quite mundane and not only that, but to play such a limited role in the story. It’s a boarding school for wealthy boys whose parents have seemingly washed their hands of the business of raising them, but only three boys out of the entire student body factor in—two who are being bullied, and the bully himself. They serve as the device for Summer to ultimately discover what he’s good at, however, which is not teaching but counseling, and which factors into the big turnaround we see in Summer from the fledgling TA we’re introduced to at the start of the book.
Riddled with anxiety and given to panic attacks, Summer can’t even look Fox (or anyone else, for that matter) in the eye when they come face to face again some seven years after Summer graduated from the academy and left Omen in hopes of “finding himself” in Baltimore, a return that was prompted as much by a lack of success as it was the need to come back and care for his mother. When Summer gets Fox alone for the first time, mere hours after his arrival at the academy, he discovers a previously untapped well of boldness and kisses Fox when the professor challenges Summer to do one brave thing a day. Of course, Summer is motivated because he’s crushed on Fox since he was a student, and he quickly turns the tables on the professor by demanding a daily kiss as the reward for his bravery. Fox’s acquiescence to Summer’s demand is equal parts curiosity and blasé. The professor has walls, and he’s determined that Summer will not penetrate them.
The irony of the psychology professor who is not in a healthy place, mentally or emotionally, and has closed himself off from anything resembling human connection, was not lost on me. Fox’s late wife died in a tragic accident some twenty years before, and he has since been locked in a cycle of grief and guilt, closing himself off and forbidding himself from moving on because he doesn’t want to dishonor her memory. Miyako Iseya is a presence in the story in the form of Fox’s reverence to her and the shrine he keeps for her in his home. Summer has no intention of trying to usurp Miyako, he merely wants Fox to live again, and this is where the tables turn in the hurt/comfort theme of the story, when the student becomes the teacher. It all happened rather quickly and leads to the final moment of conflict when Fox runs away from Summer, ostensibly for Summer’s own good, and prompts the climactic scene in which Fox finds the courage to admit that he’s in love with the man who tore down the defense mechanisms he’d clung to for so long.
There was some beautiful imagery invoked by McCade’s prose, some truly lovely turns of phrase which, at times maybe tipped over a bit into the purple, but overall, I appreciated that the author’s voice served the story he told in a complementary way. While there were also times when I felt as if I was supposed to know Summer already, more so than I got to know him through this book, for sure, and while I appreciated his transformation—albeit that it felt a little abrupt—and the ways in which he brought about Fox’s own evolution with little more than patience, love, and understanding, in the end I think my expectations exceeded what the story delivered.
You can buy Just Like That here:
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