Review: Teaching Ben by Shae Connor

Learning to love means a study in patience.

Fresh out of the military, Ben Cooper is ready for a new start. He’s away from his domineering father, making his own choices… and out of the closet. On his first day of college, he meets David Powell, who’s just the kind of gorgeous man Ben’s dreamed of. Too bad he’s the teaching assistant—which makes him off-limits in Ben’s eyes.

David is Ben’s age, but his life has taken a different path. He’s close with his family, who helped him deal with personal struggles after he came out. And while he’s staying away from any hint of scandal, Ben’s a kind of temptation he hasn’t faced in years. If only they’d met on more equal footing.

As the semester progresses and their lives become more entwined, keeping their relationship platonic becomes more difficult. They just have to hold out until the end of the semester…


This was cute but it didn’t really do much for me.

I’ll keep this short.

I liked the idea of student Ben falling for “teacher” David and the beginning with their flirting was super cute. It was even great seeing them become friends and David folding Ben into his family even if was just with his sister and roommate Hope for the time being.

But what bugged me was the reasons these two stayed away from each other for so long. I get that both men have had issues in their past but to keep beating the reader over the head with “But he’s my teacher” or “But he’s my student” was redundant and ridiculous because we are also beat over the head with the knowledge that Ben and David could be in a relationship and IT WASN’T AGAINST THE RULES.

I am all in for the slow burn but this was so slow, I got bored. The romance was pushed aside by a few characters that weren’t necessary and the Larry issues seemed to be a way to distract the reader and took me out of the story. David’s secrets weren’t as scandalous as we were lead to believe and the way he reveals his secret to Ben was told really weird and again took me out of the story when I should have been deeply engaged at that point.

There were parts I really liked and I did like Ben and David as characters, I even liked their chemistry but I wish something happened sooner than it did. The long drawn out wait for them to move forward romantically in any way made the sex or pay off for the wait feel obligatory and not organic. I didn’t care at that point if there was sex or not. But weirdly enough, I bought the “I love you’s” between them.

I don’t know. This wasn’t the book for me so we’ll leave it at that.




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