ARC Review: Dear Professor by Blaire Drake


★★★☆ 3.5 stars


Make no mistake, DEAR PROFESSOR is as steamy and sexy as it sounds! Professor Jordan Keaton is the stuff of dreams. An intelligent man, brooding and mysterious, he is as intense and passionate in the bedroom as he is in his classroom. Pair him with a college student who works as a cam girl to fund her way through an Ivy league law school, and you'll get nothing less than scorching encounters between the sheets.

"I was no longer Darcy Hamilton, Dalton cam girl. I was Darcy Hamilton, Professor Jordan Keaton's personal whore."

The book merges two commonly-used scenarios in romances today. (1) A brooding, sexy professor stirring up a romance with his student, and (2) a heroine who works in the porn industry and is confident in her sexuality. I was interested in reading this book because with these two scenarios together, there's a really good potential for a moving and intense love story.

The characters are pretty likable. Darcy is, as mentioned above, confident and who has no hangups or drama about her job. She knows the deal: she's a cam girl living in a dorm full of other cam girls, she is friends with these girls, and she performs online for the enjoyment of men several nights a week. Sometimes she does her shows alone, sometimes she has a partner. She also knows she won't be accepted at Harvard if her word came out about her job (although to be honest, why she expects it to remain a secret when she shows her face every time she goes online is beyond me). What I liked about her is she owns up to her decisions. She's not a whiner or a drama queen, nor does she blame her parents or the world about her plight.

Jordan, on the other hand, is totally an asshole *grins*. LOL, I really can't describe him anything less! What he did to Darcy can truly be classified as sexual abuse and can be brought up to court as a criminal case. Like most bondage romances though, there is consent even though Darcy tries to resist at first and maintains that she hates his guts. The why's and how's are not always understandable or logical to most people, but there you have it...

"I hadn't sold my soul to the sex industry. I'd sold it to my history professor. And I hadn't charged him nearly enough for it."

So yes, these two strike a deal and decide to have a secret affair. Predictably, they begin to care deeply for one another as time goes by. The consequences of their relationship, should it be divulged, are always hanging over their heads, though. And indeed, as their feelings grew more genuine and meaningful, they became more careless with how they behave towards each other in public. This then led to the climax of the book.

The story falls a little short for me though, hence my rating of 3.5. The last few chapters felt rushed. The narrative steadily rose to that climax of Jordan and Darcy getting caught, but once we got there, the problem and its resolution were over in just three short chapters. I was expecting for bigger consequences and a lengthier period of difficulty. The evidence of their relationship, after all, was very damning. I thought they got nothing more than a slap in the wrist and that was unrealistic to me. Too bad because I thought the book started out strong.

These issues aside, DEAR PROFESSOR promises to be one spicy read, and the book does live up to expectations. Oh, and here's an interesting trivia: Blaire Drake is apparently an alias of a best-selling author! =) Said author is keeping her identity under wraps for now. I wonder who she is, because she writes really sizzling sex scenes!

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Only $0.99! Amazon

This review is meant to be part of the blog tour hosted by Inkslinger PR. My thanks to them and the publisher for the ARC!

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