Ancient History

My romance journey continues, and things are looking up! I had a good time. 

What have I learned? I'm definitely more of a closed door/fade to black girlie when it comes to the sex scenes, but the open door scenes in this didn't bother me. There were maybe too many too close together, but they weren't too cringe. 

I'm having a tough time rating this, because the first third got me hooked, but then I felt like it kind of ran into pacing issues and redundancy in the last two thirds. 

Did I enjoy it? Yes. 
Is it one of the better gay romances I've read so far? Yes. 
Is it a solid 4 stars? Mm... not quite, but it doesn't feel right giving it 3 stars. 

What I liked: 

• Loved the chemistry.
• Love the banter and dialogue.
• Love that there was no real fake/contrived obstacles from unrealistic miscommunication and easily avoidable plot-armored misunderstandings
• I enjoyed the writing; it's very easy to read, and light, and avoids the cringe or clunkiness I've seen in other romance books. I'm keen to read more from A.J. Truman. 
• Usually I find kid characters in adult romances to be a huge bore and often are an instant “nope”, so why I thought reading a book set in a school would work, I don't know. But it did work! I found the setting really charming, and thankfully, none of the students themselves get much “screen time” and didn't derail things or feel too ham-fisted. None of them are a focus outside of the teachers teaching.

What I didn't like:

• I felt a little bit uncomfortable with spiciness occurring on school property during school hours. I get it, it's fiction, but the whole time I was like “This feels super inappropriate” and I couldn't get past it. Maybe that's a “me” problem.
• The middle third is basically just boning and felt repetitive and redundant. At first I was like, “Yay! Get it!” and then I was like “Arrright, c'mon, you're adults; control yourselves.” Mileage may vary; if you prefer open door, then maybe you'd vibe with this, but it was just a lot of it very close together.
• This kinda leads into the pacing issues of the last third. I feel like they got together too early, then just banged a lot, so the rest of story started feeling repetitive and like filling. There were some scenes that just seemed to be there to set up another book in the series, which I'm not opposed to, but maybe it could've been less heavy-handed. 
• Also, the book ends about four times, and I don't feel like it was necessary. I'd have that excited, satisfied feeling that I was finishing a book, and then... oh, there's more. Okay. Oh, now it's the end; how cute! Oh... there's more... It's like the author couldn't pick an ending and slapped them all in. I could have done with just the cut to “Two years later”, and given the “Weeks later” and “Two months later” a miss.
• I feel like the book could have been shorter by a third, or even maybe half. 
• The very real concerns about being out or facing homophobia and their potential impacts on careers, livelihoods, and safety felt robbed of their stakes by the fact that it seemed like all of the teachers were gay or bi men. Again... I get it, it's a light romance, maybe I'm reading too deeply here.
• I guess there are no women or femme-presenting folks in Sourwood. 🤷 I get that it's a book about bout gay men, but it felt weird and made the town of Sourwood and South Rock High not feel as fleshed out or real as it could have.