He'll do his job, and do it well, but nobody is going to get inside the wall he's erected. Well, maybe he'll make an exception for Cassie. Kathryn Shay has penned a most unusual novel. I can't give it away here. Suffice it to say that he's a Vietnam veteran.
Cassie is more of a stock character.
Her personality comes across as borderline abrasive at first, but Shay manages to redeem her by the first hundred pages or so. Their relationship feels natural enough, and the dialogue is a standout. But oddly enough, though I found the romance to be satisfying, it's the secondary characters of the kids I remember most from the story. The ending almost brought me to tears. And Shay makes several valid points about the reality of being a high-school teacher in the 1990s.