Review: Decent story
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 17, 2014
Lessons in Love is the first book of the three book Lessons in Love series by Clarissa Carlyle.  You can pick this one up for $.99 on Amazon.  This is the story of Alex Heron, a beautiful high school senior who is the captain of the cheerleading squad and appears to have it all.  But Alex has a secret that she is keeping from everyone; she doesn’t have it all.  Through a series of things, Alex ends up confiding in her hot Math teacher, Mark Simmons.  At 25, Mark is only seven years older than Alex.  As Alex confides in him, they quickly develop feelings for each other.  Will they allow those feelings to become a relationship?I enjoyed the first half of this story.  It is well written at a pace that held my attention.  Although I didn’t really like Alex, I was interested enough to keep reading to see what would happen to her once her friends found out her big secret.  Alex comes off as extremely self-centered.  She is trying to fit in with the self-centered, popular crowd, though, so I guess that makes sense.  Nothing we know about Alex is true, so I found it hard to make a connection to her that made me care about her one way or the other.  She cares too much about what other people think of her, which made me think less of her.I could imagine Mark as the hot young teacher that all of the girls have a crush on, however he is so mean as a teacher I can’t imagine that any of the students would actually like him.  I find it a bit creepy that a 25 year old would be interested in a self-centered 18 year old.  Seven years isn’t that big of a difference later in life, but at 25 and 18, it should be a pretty big gap in maturity levels.There were many unrealistic things that happened in this story.  I don’t want to go into detail since I would have to include spoilers, but these things kept me from being able to fully enjoy the last part of the book.I do feel that Ms. Carlyle did a good job with the way she wrote Alex.  I did believe that she was a confused, angry, lonely girl.  She desperately needs someone to talk to with everything she has gone through, and her mom isn’t there for her as she should have been.  It made sense to me that Alex ended up confiding in Mark.  With Mark showing interest in her, I can see Alex, as an immature, lonely girl missing someone dear to her, losing herself in that attention.  Overall, though, the ending seemed anti-climatic to me.  I will read the next books in the series to see how Alex grows as a character and person as she goes to college.