It has taken me a few days to compartmentalise my feelings towards this book.

I love a good teacher/student romance, I adore age gap romances and I thoroughly enjoy reading them. To be entirely honest I enjoyed this one when I first started it; right up until the 25% mark, that is.

Helen Palmer (referred to as such throughout the whole book), loves Mr Roberts (again, constantly referred to as such) and has drawn many a dirty illustration as a way to vent her desires. One day the sketchbook is dropped on the floor and picked up by none other than Mr Roberts, and lo and behold the illustration that the book landed on is possibly the raunchiest one in the entire thing. Just her luck, right?! So at this point I'm really feeling the book. It's tense, almost amusing, and I'm waiting to see what happens next. She leaves him, a little dumbfounded, and avoids him for a week or so afterwards... But after that, the whole story descends into a pit of misery and discomfort.

Marked as spoilers from hereon out because I go into a lot of detail about the issues I had about this story.

Helen's best friend is the only person that she has confided in about her crush on Mr Roberts, and she is seemingly extremely supportive in this. They have conversations amongst themselves about it and don't really talk about anything else. It all seems very well and good until one day they have a sleepover and Lizzie decides that she's going to get Helen to pretend that she is Mr Harper and proceeds to entice her to talk about her fantasies. The first time this happened I felt a little bit queasy but every time it happened after that I simply couldn't contain the nausea building in my stomach. After that night, Lizzie decides to up the ante and makes a sexual move on Helen, once more under the guise that she is doing it out of the goodness of her own heart to help Helen let go of some of her frustrations towards her teacher. However, multiple times during the scene Helen tells Lizzie to stop. She explicitly tells Lizzie that she doesn't feel comfortable and her internal monologue is a little distressing because she really doesn't feel safe, comfortable and definitely doesn't enjoy it. Lizzie completely ignores her and continues to 'pleasure' her long enough to make the idea of not consenting to this fall out of her head. Helen didn't want her best friend to touch her, to kiss her, to start to attempt to act out fantasies with her. Helen didn't want an ounce of that and her internal monologue makes that frighteningly obvious. Things get weird with Lizzie from then on and it doesn't seem like it'll be the same again - which I was thinking good, you shouldn't stay friends with a damn rapist anyway! But Helen doesn't seem to connect the dots that what Lizzie actually did was, in fact, rape. Her so called best friend blatantly took advantage of her and used her position as best friend to get sex, and then later attempted to make it better by saying that she was actually in love with Helen. As if that would excuse her getting Helen drunk numerous times and molesting her numerous times against her consent. Even when Helen is pleading for her to stop she continues, and she tries to make it better not only by dropping the l-bomb but also by admitting that she was being sexually assaulted too. Two massively effed up wrongs don't make a right. I just couldn't bring myself to take this novel seriously after this happened numerous times and each and every time Lizzie got her drunk in order to lower her inhibitions to take absolute advantage of her. It made me feel sick to my core.

There were aspects of this book that I did appreciate, however - particularly the exploration of female sexuality. It wasn't a topic that was shied away from or hidden in any way and the openness of the discussions surrounding Helen's kinks and the exploration of such elements was particularly refreshing. I also really appreciated the attitude that Mark shared towards it too, that he was happy to explore these things with her as long as she fully consented and that they took it slowly. But honestly that's as far as the good things go for me. The scenes themselves where the sexual acts are taking place weren't brilliantly written and felt too basic and quick to be remotely enjoyable. To say that this is supposed to be an explicit exploration of kinks and female sexuality, it felt very thin to me. It just didn't feel like there was enough care and attention going into writing those scenes as there was everything else and I personally found that there was more detail in the Helen/Lizzie rape scenes than in the Mark/Helen sex scenes, which really didn't sit well with me.

I liked the writing to a certain point but it was far too detailed in areas wherein detail needed to be minimal and not detailed enough where the story required more. The characters were 'meh' at best. I can't say I particularly cared for Mark, though he definitely had his moments. Helen was okay, her father was an abomination and an absolute disgrace (he was also massively verbally abusive), and Lizzie was vile. I just... can't with this book. I'm so dismayed that I really liked the start of it and it quickly got burned to dust.

I feel I need to end this review with a very light disclaimer. I have perceived this book in one way and you may perceive it in another. If you loved this book then that is your right, and I am not going to judge anyone that does adore this book and I would expect the same in return. We like what we like to read (regardless of whether we agree with the characters' actions), and that's that.