A Season of Eden by J. M. Warwick

A Season of Eden by J. M. Warwick

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Book received from Around the World Tours

He's my teacher. I shouldn't be alone with him. But I can't help that he's irresistible. I let the door silently close at my back. He stared at me, and a taut quiet stretched between us.

"I like hearing you play," I said, moving toward him. He turned, in sync with my slow approach. He looked up at me but didn't say anything. I rested my clammy hand on the cold, slick body of the baby grand.

"May I?" The muscles in his throat shifted, then he swallowed.

"Eden." My knees weakened, like a soft tickling kiss had just been blown
against the backs of them.

"Is it okay?" I asked. His gaze held mine like two hands joined. He
understood what I was really asking.

"Let me stay," I said. "Please."

"You're going to get me in trouble," he said.

This book has a topic that is a little hard for me to like. Romantic teacher-student relationships are simply wrong in my book no matter what the age. These are my personal feelings about them.

What makes Eden and her teacher, Mr. Christian, so different from teacher-student relationship portrayed in books like Prey and Boy Toy is that Eden is 18 and Mr. Christian (James) is 22. The relationship is skirting a fine line between what is appropriate and what isn't. For me, it is inappropriate for any teacher to have a relationship with his or her students. Even university professors are, in most cases, not allowed to have a relationship with their students even if they are legally adults. I don't think that Warwick is trying to say that Eden and Mr. Christian's relationship is any better or less sketchy, but I do feel that Warwick has found a new way to write about this kind of relationship.

Eden is teenager who lost her mother years ago, and who watched her father jump into a new marriage just months later. Now, Eden feels forgotten by her father, and hates being around her stepmother. She listens to them fighting and you can tell how badly she wants to escape her home life. Perhaps it's this family life that causes Eden to fall for an inappropriate man, and quickly leave her high school boyfriend without much of a thought. Or perhaps it's the fact that Mr. Christian is only four years older then Eden that they try to convince each other they aren't doing anything wrong. Whatever their insecurities are with this relationship they both can't seem to stop each other from doing it.

This was a well-written, lyrical book. The romance between Eden and Mr. Christian is so tantalizing it's hard not to want things to work out for them. You can really see how Eden falls for Mr. Christian and how he reluctantly falls for her. More of this book is played towards how this relationship helps Eden grow as a person rather then the fact that his is her teacher. Whatever your own feelings are on student-teacher relationships I urge you to give this book a try. I really believe it will have readers talking, and as a comparative piece to YA books like Boy Toy and Prey it has the potential to really spark a discussion. This book was first released in 2008, and is available in paperback.