Head of the class...
Garrett Daniels has this whole life thing figured out.
The cocky, charismatic former high school star quarterback is an idolized football coach and "cool" teacher in the hometown where he's not just a golden boy — he's platinum. He has good friends, a great house on the lake, and the best damn sidekick a man could ask for: Snoopy, the albino beagle.
Then...Callie Carpenter comes home.
And knocks him right on his tight end zone.
Back to school...
Callie has a pretty sweet life herself...on the other side of the country. But circumstances — that she'd prefer to never speak of again — have brought her back home, helping out her parents and substitute teaching at her old high school.
Now she's facing bickering, raging hormones, constant gossip, awkward weirdness, and drama galore...and that's just the teachers.
Just like old times...
When Garrett offers to show his former high school sweetheart the secrets of his winning teacher ways, Callie jumps at the chance - and then has to stop herself from jumping him.
Good friends are all they can ever be.
Or...these teachers just might end up getting schooled — hard — by love.
Includes a special bonus interview with the author!
©2018 Emma Chase (P)2018 Audible Originals, LLC.
Review by Lisa Kane
3.5 Stars
Garrett Daniels and Callie Carpenter were high school sweet hearts. The one couple everyone thought would end up marrying, having babies and living out their HEA. And they thought so too, until life got complicated, hearts got shattered and Callie moved away.
Seventeen years later, Garrett is the high school football coach, and is just about a god to everyone in the town. Yeah he's a player, but he answers to no one but himself and women know where he stands. Life is good.
"I like you too. But I also like my life the way it is. A lot."
Callie lives on the other side of the country, is a success in the theatre world and for her, life is good too. Right up until her parents are involved in an accident (her mother was showing her father "some love" while they were driving, they crashed and each broke a leg!) and she has to come home to take care of them. To the place where her life fell apart. To the town where her first love still lives. To a substitute teaching job in the theatre department for the next year.
When I read the part where Garrett and Callie come face to face again my stomach was doing flip flops like it was on a trampoline.
And just like that, I'm sucked back to being seventeen again-standing in this parking lot after school. How many times did he hug me right here in this spot? How many times did he kiss me-sometimes quick and fleeting, sometimes slow with longing, cradling my face in his large hands?
Their reunion is sweet and peppered with humor. Both remember each other as their first love. But neither one really knows the other anymore. They've been apart for so many years. The attraction is still there, but will a fire burn from the embers? Each is successful in their careers, but those careers are on opposite sides of the country.
How can I ask him that? To give up his kids, and probably coaching and the things he loves so much? The things that make him who he is?
I can't.
I would never. Just like he won't ask me to stay in Lakeside.
We're stuck.
Did I like Getting Schooled? Yep. Did I love it? Here's the thing-there was too much going on in this story. Threads about the kids on the football team, kids breaking the law and the consequences from their actions, Garrett's millions of nieces and nephews whose names I can't remember, all kinds of drama that had little to nothing to do with the main couple. It was all a bit too much. I wanted the story to dig deeply into Callie and Garrett's souls, let me feel their pain, let me feel that slow burn when they are reconnecting. But it all got lost in the other character's stories and I ended up with a lot less story about them, and a whole lot of story about other people that I really didn't care about.
Emma Chase is a 1-click author for me. I may not have connected with this book, but it wouldn't stop me from reading whatever else she has planned for us.
"I love you too, Cal, so much.
Everything else ....is just details."
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High school parking lots are one of the most dangerous places on earth. I don’t have statistics to back that up…but I know it’s true.
I pull into the school parking lot Monday morning in my Dad’s giant, newly repaired mint-green Buick, with Back in Black by AC/DC blasting from the speakers. I feel tough, powerful—like I’m driving a tank.
I’m a badass teacher—I’ll run you down even if you’re a student—I’ve got twenty-nine more in class just like you.
The outfit helps too—leather boots, blue jeans, a starched white blouse and a black leather jacket. It’s my armor. The morning air is cool and crisp today, but I barely feel it. I’m locked and loaded and ready to roll.
As I march towards the main entrance, I spot Garrett and Dean and Alison Bellinger outside the doors. They pause when they see me, waiting.
“Damn,” Dean chuckles. “Callie’s got her shit-kickers on. Did you dig them out of a mosh pit from 1993?”
Garrett crosses his arms. “Somebody’s channeling Michelle Pfiefer in Dangerous Minds.”
He looks fantastic. His hair is tousled from the breeze and kisses his brow, and he’s wearing a dark blue sweater that’s snug around his biceps and soft, worn, light blue jeans. I remember his arms around me yesterday on my parent’s porch. The wonder and exhilaration of the moment.
Of him.
The intensity in his eyes, the desire and possessiveness in the grasp of his hands. The scorching feel of his mouth, his wet talented tongue that made my stomach swirl and my head spin.
So much for not complicating things.
But I’m not going to play head games with myself or Garrett—we’re too old for that shit.
I have feelings for him—I always have—our break-up had nothing to do with either of us not wanting each other desperately. But these aren’t just leftover echoes of a sweet, first love—this is something new. A throbbing, breathless attraction to the amazing man he’s become. I want to be near him. I want to know him, inside and out, all over again.
And he feels the same way. Garrett wants this version of me as much as he always did—maybe even more. I heard it in his whispered words and felt it in his kiss.
I don’t know if we have a future, if it can go anywhere. We have separate lives on opposite ends of the country. But I’m not going to worry about that—for now, I’m going to take each day as it comes and enjoy every moment we can.
Except for now. Now is not the time for enjoying or worrying or relationship building…now is the time for focusing. Now is the time to be ice and steel—don’t smile, don’t waver.
“Little fucknutters don’t know who the hell they’re dealing with,” I growl.
Allison pumps her fist. “That’s the spirit.”
Garrett opens the door for me. “Go get ‘em, Gangster’s Paradise.”
Emma Chase is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the hot and hilarious Tangled series and The Legal Briefs series. Emma lives in New Jersey with her husband, two children and two naughty (but really cute) dogs. She has a long-standing love/hate relationship with caffeine.
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