A Fine Work of Art by Shelby Reed

Shelby Reed’s A Fine Work Of Art has one thing going for it with­out even open­ing the cover: it fea­tures a older woman/younger man rela­tion­ship and has the added con­flict of the teacher/student rela­tion­ship. How well does the author pull this off?

Eliz­a­beth Gilstrom’s mar­riage has recently fallen apart. Her soon to be ex-husband, Stu­art, who is a neu­ro­sur­geon, leaves her for his young, perky sur­gi­cal assis­tant. Hurt feel­ings aside, Eliz­a­beth reluc­tantly finds her­self attracted to one of her stu­dents in her art his­tory class. It’s an attrac­tion she’s more than will­ing to ignore until cir­cum­stances bring things to a head. Boone McCrea is a pretty good look­ing art stu­dent who flirts with his pro­fes­sor but never really expects much. He’s always there to help or to lis­ten. On one occa­sion — they go out for din­ner when Boone gives her ride home because her car bat­tery has died. Oppor­tu­nity presents itself and Boone does go for it.

Mean­while, Eliz­a­beth is reserved and uncom­fort­able because of their 10 year age dif­fer­ence and the impro­pri­ety due to the teacher/student rela­tion­ship. Of course Eliz­a­beth has more to loose than Boone. It’s a risky affair and one that in real life would have been dis­as­trous. As Eliz­a­beth hedges, Boone’s well mus­cled body and hot kisses are very per­sua­sive. Even­tu­ally they do sleep together and Eliz­a­beth is left won­der­ing what oth­ers might think of this rela­tion­ship while Boone is left hurt that their rela­tion­ship can’t be broad­cast to the world. Ah, youngsters.

As I was read­ing this book, I was reminded of another book that I enjoyed very much, One Sum­mer by Karen Robards. Except in that sit­u­a­tion, the hero was a for­mer stu­dent. In A Fine Work of Art, I wasn’t sure I could buy the rela­tion­ship because it had so much going against it and plus, it was clearly wrong, wrong, wrong. How­ever, this is fan­tasy. I went along with it despite my reser­va­tions. But most erot­ica is about push­ing the enve­lope so, I moved past it.

Over­all, the writ­ing was solid and strong. I was impressed as I’ve read sev­eral Ellora’s Cave nov­els and none has been this strong for me. Char­ac­ter­i­za­tion was pretty decent, the story had great atmos­phere, great chem­istry and the con­flicts the cou­ple faced were real­is­tic but I did have one prob­lem: I just didn’t buy that they loved each other. They may have been in lust, but not love. I felt that their rela­tion­ship needed more time and growth before tak­ing the next step into marriage.

This is erot­ica so the author did put in numer­ous well placed , very hot, love scenes that moved the plot along and weren’t seen as grat­i­tu­tious to me. This was a very well writ­ten novel that I did enjoy read­ing despite my reser­va­tions about the rela­tion­ship and whether or not the age dif­fer­ence would yawn between them.

A few more quibbles.

Eliz­a­beth does resign and even though the author por­trayed most peo­ple as being accept­ing of the rela­tion­ship, I’m pretty sure many wouldn’t be and her res­ig­na­tion was a neces­sity. There was another instance where I just had to shake my head again. It was when Eliz­a­beth has got­ten her car out of the shop after hav­ing it fixed once and  she secretly goes to watch Boone in a soc­cer game. She sneaks out after the game is over hop­ing he didn’t see her and gets in her car and can’t turn the engine. The bat­tery has died again. I could buy it once but not twice.

I did buy, however, all of Ms. Reed’s back­list as I did  love her writ­ing. She def­i­nitely has a new fan in me. Over­all, this was a very good read but not a keeper for rea­sons stated.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Shelby Reed, A Fine Work of Art, Roman­tica Review

For Fur­ther Reading

• REVIEW: The Fifth Favor by Shelby Reed
• REVIEW: A Third Party by Chris Tanglen
• Aunt Penelope’s Harem, Chris Tanglen
• REVIEW: Dan­ger­ous Lover by Lisa Marie Rice
• REVIEW: Scan­dalous Lovers by Robin Schone
• REVIEW: The Assign­ment by Evan­ge­line Anderson
• Sucks to Be You by Sahara Kelly
• Dare Me by Leigh Ellwood
• REVIEW: Seduced in Twi­light by Anya Bast
• REVIEW: Tempted by Two by Anya Bast

Tagged as: Ellora's Cave, Romantica, Shelby Reed