Trust Your Tutor

Title: Trust Your Tutor
Author: Lilith Grey
Publisher: Amber Allure
Genre: M/M contemporary
Buy link: Buy Link Trust Your Tutor
Length: Novella (76 pages, approx 20k)
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

A reader review by Leslie S

Summary: A quick, undemanding, but ultimately forgettable read.

Blurb

Gabriel Langdon is the typical university senior slacker. After coasting by for four years, Gabriel’s mother decides to intercede just as his final summer course begins. Her interference comes in the form of high school graduate, jock-genius tutor named Justin Freely.

Gabriel, gay and out to everyone but his persistent ex-girlfriend Jessica, wants Justin—and goes about getting him in all the wrong ways. Justin has been burned before, and he isn’t readily willing to let Gabriel into his life. With the more time they spend together, however, Justin comes to see there is something more than a student/mentor relationship emerging. Can Justin let go of the past to give Gabriel a chance, or will Gabriel’s often-deluded attempts at seduction only hurt them both?

Review

The blurb does a pretty good job at describing the action in what is essentially an extended PWP. Gabriel, an English major with average grades, is horrified when his mum summons him home to meet the son of one of her friends. Justin is 18 and a genius who’s just won a scholarship to read English at the same school as Gabriel. Their mums think it’ll be a good idea for Justin to tutor Gabriel through his final online course taking place over the summer break. Gabriel is a little humiliated but he’s such an easy-going lad that he thinks maybe the tutoring could be fun, especially as Justin is easy on the eye and very fit.

Justin insists on setting a study schedule and Gabriel finds that he’s enjoying his class because of the tutoring. He admires Justin not just because of his looks but also because Justin always seems to be doing something new – going to the gym, learning guitar – while Gabriel has never really bothered about anything and is content to drift through life. He wants Justin to be his friend, and over the weeks they get to know each other a little, Gabriel also discovers that Justin is gay. But when Gabriel gets too close emotionally and physically, Justin runs off. Confused, Gabriel decides to track Justin down and demand answers – and to see whether their relationship has a chance of working out.

This reads more like a YA novella than anything else. It’s a bit like those Sweet Valley High books (showing my age there!), where the conflict revolves around people not communicating. Okay, it’s a short novella at 20k, but even so, this is very flimsy.

Gabriel is 22 but seems very young for his age. He loves his parents but sometimes chafes at being under their thumb – they pay for his mobile phone so they veto what he can look at, for example. It strikes me as a little unbelievable that a 22 year old in his final year at university would be so dependent upon his parents, or would choose to be so dependent. Maybe it’s different in a small town environment but it didn’t give me a good impression. Anyway, Gabriel’s parents know he’s gay and are fine with it, but his mum asks him not to invite Justin into his bedroom. On the first day of tutoring, Justin borrows a pair of swimming shorts, and Gabriel explains that they can’t be together in his bedroom at the same time. Again I have to wonder whether this character is really a 22 year old man or a 12 year old boy! Little of Gabriel’s behaviour seems realistic for even a sheltered young man of that age, and his emotional responses also seem to be coming from the perspective of someone much younger, which basically makes him look immature.

This immaturity carries through to his treatment of his ex-girlfriend Jessica, who doesn’t know he’s gay. She hopes to get back together with him, but instead of telling her the truth, Gabriel avoids the issue and when she tries to set up dates, he pretends he’s busy and hopes she’ll get the hint. He says he doesn’t want to hurt her feelings, but of course while he’s acting like an immature brat that’s exactly what he’s doing.

Then we come to his romance with Justin. The initial dynamic seemed intriguing, as Justin is 18 but more masculine in his looks, more intelligent, and acts much older than Gabriel. Unfortunately the story is told through Gabriel’s POV so we don’t get much of a chance to see Justin’s personality, which to my mind would have been more interesting as a comparison. Sadly the dynamic isn’t fully explored and fizzles out halfway into the story.

Overall there’s a lack of description, especially as regards place, which gives the story a generic PWP feel to it. Something more solid, even just a few small touches (such as actually naming the town – it doesn’t have to exist, but even naming a state or province would have been useful) would have helped make the story and its setting feel more real. For example, since the plot revolves around Justin tutoring Gabriel for an English literature course, instead of hand-waving over ‘they discussed the text and Gabriel showed how clever he was’, I’d have preferred to have been shown that information rather than told it. I’d like to have known what the text was, at the very least. Maybe I’m strange (LOL) but I think if you’re setting a story around something specific, then use details of the specific to make it more interesting for the readers. Otherwise it’s all a bit faceless and feels like the author didn’t care that much about what she was writing. I would like some story along with my smut, please!

Talking of smut, the one sex scene comes towards the end of the story when the Big Misunderstanding has been resolved by the simple expedient of the characters actually talking to one another. The majority of the story is PG rated and then we get the NC-17 part, which didn’t really work for me. I honestly thought this was a sweet romance, given the lack of eroticism or sensuality elsewhere in the story, so when the sex scene arrived it was a bit jarring.

After the resolution of the Big Misunderstanding there’s not much conflict to keep the story going, so things wrap up pretty quickly. I’m not going to give away the ending, but as far as things working out for Gabriel, I had to roll my eyes at just how unbelievable it was.

Trust Your Tutor isn’t a good book but neither is it a bad book. It’s average, and sometimes you just want to read something light and undemanding and, yes, average. It’s a quick read, but it’s ultimately forgettable. Try it if you have half an hour to spare and you fancy something fluffy.