Love and Learn by Ava Blackstone
Released: April 2016
Contemporary Romance
Reviewed by Mandi
Navy SEAL Tyler MacKinnon is that guy. The one who pitches a no-hitter in the big game even though he skipped practice. The one who can get any girl into bed with a funny story and a grin. But when Ty is hit by an IED, his charmed life is blown straight to hell.
Though his leg heals, that naive certainty that the universe is on his side is gone forever. And it’s like everyone knows it. Everyone except Annabelle Voretti, the sweet, studious girl Ty left when he made the spur-of-the-moment decision to join the Navy right out of high school. When Ty is with Annabelle, he feels like himself again. But winning her back is going to take a fight, and Ty is used to going with the flow instead of battling the current.
Annabelle has only ever taken one risk in her life—and it sent the most popular boy in school running straight from her arms to the Navy, leaving her with a raging case of sexual insecurity. Now Ty wants a second chance, but Annabelle has learned her lesson. Except what if? What if the only way for Annabelle to heal her sexual scars is to go back to the source? Some one-on-one tutoring from Ty might be just what she needs—if only she can find the courage to take one more crazy risk.
I’m just going to jump right into what didn’t work for me in this story. First, Annabelle and Ty were together, before he left for the army. They have been pen-pals since then, keeping up to date with each other over email. But when Ty shows up at the school where Annabelle is a teacher’s assistant, she is stunned to see him in person. But I felt as the reader, their reunion confused me. It was kind of a flat reunion – it just didn’t feel like a genuine reunion between two people who have known each other a long time or have a history together.
Annabelle is a teacher’s assistant for a human sexuality class, but she feels like a fraud because she has never had an orgasm with a guy and she feels frigid in bed and it’s hard for her to get a date. This bothers me – first because I think you can be professor of the evolution of human sexuality and not have to be some wild girl in the bedroom. But more so, Annabelle never felt like a professor. I don’t know what she felt like, but being to the point of being a teacher’s assistant never came across.
Her relationship with Ty fell a little flat too. Ty’s PTSD seems to basically disappear once he is reunited with Annabelle and that seemed convenient. And there is an odd moment towards the end when Annabelle’s dad and brothers catch Ty sleeping over at her house, and her father literally makes Ty propose to her. This isn’t the 1800’s, right? For a woman who is supposedly well-versed in sexuality and all that comes with it, to be railroaded by your father into marriage seems odd.
Just didn’t work for me
Grade: C-
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