Falling In Fall: The Englishman Review + Giveaway

The Englishman

Author: Nina Lewis

Genre: Contemporary Romance/Fiction

Publication Date: May 12, 2013

Publisher: Onmific Publishing

ISBN: 162342012

Event organized by: Literati Literature Lovers

~ENTER GIVEAWAY BELOW~

Anna has landed her dream job as an Assistant Professor of English literature at a prestigious college in the South. Instead of charging ahead with her career, however, she is confronted by hurdles, pitfalls and mysteries. Why does no one restrain the demented hoarder who secretly uses her office as his private storeroom? Who is responsible for her sudden loss in salary? What is behind the vandalism in her department? Is it a personal attack against her irreverent and somewhat unconventional teaching style?

Professor Giles Cleveland is supposed to mentor her in all this, but he’s arrogant, sardonic, condescending, disconcertingly attractive and – Anna keeps reminding herself as the temptation to start a kamikaze affair with him becomes overwhelming – absolutely out of bounds. Anna and Giles grow increasingly reckless and it is only a matter of time before they will be caught and Anna’s career will crash and burn. But when the crash comes, it’s worse than Anna imagined. And far better than she could have dreamed.

[Anna and Giles find the lost file that proves the rapist professor’s guilt]

“Well, come on then!” I draw him up by his hand—surely in an emergency, innocent physical contact is allowed?—and to my surprise he holds on to it.

“I don’t want you involved in this,” he says.

“I am involved! He rifled my desk for it!”

“That’s incidental.”

“Giles!” I fairly shout at him, all excited and impatient to have at least one of my Ardrossan mysteries solved.

“It’s no use yelling at me. Do what you like when you’re tenured, but for the next five years you must be as untainted by scandal as a newly hatched spring chicken!”

The implications of this harsh statement hit me as if one of the stone statues had been knocked against the back of my head. But this is a piece of his mind that I will have to chew in private, and not in the middle of the garden, in the middle of campus, still holding hands with him, for Chrissakes!

“Be that as it may,” I say, pulling my hand from his clasp. “I must know about the file! Is it in your office?”

“No,” he says mechanically, but he is in as much of a hurry to get back to the Observatory as I am.

“Hey, sir, you’re going in the wrong direction!” some students shout across at us. We are swimming against the current because everyone is now streaming toward the stadium for the evening game.

I am almost running now to keep up with his long strides.

“Anna, go and powder your nose!” he says curtly when we have reached the first-floor hallway.

“Unfair!”

“Boo-hoo. That’s tenure track for you.” He pushes his hands into his jacket pockets for his keys. “Off you run. Will you be at the—and you needn’t make Bambi eyes at me, Miss Lieberman! I’m proof against ’em! Well,” he corrects himself punctiliously, “maybe that’s overstating the case. But I don’t hold with corrupting vulnerable young women, and I won’t let you read that file. Stop that!” He turns away from me, and I can see his ears have gone red. I only did as he said; opened my eyes at him, fluttered my lashes, pushed out my lower lip and pouted.

“What if I sit across the room from you, and you just tell me whether it’s there or not?”

This makes him laugh, but he is still barring my way into his office. Just as well that the hallway is empty and nobody can see our ridiculous mating dance. Non-mating dance.

“What if I sit across the room, with my face against the wall and my eyes closed?”

“Anna—”

“If I touch you, you can scream,” I challenge him quietly.

Anna Lieberman lands her dream job as an Assistant Professor of English Literature at a distinguished university. Here, she meets her arrogant mentor, "The Englishman," Giles Cleveland. Anna and Giles had so much sexual tension; it was killing me! Yet another book I was screaming, "Come on people! Do it already!" This story has a very similar feeling to Sylvain Reynard's Gabriel's Inferno Series with the university setting. So, if you enjoyed Gabriel, you will adore Giles. I'm a huge fan of romance stories with a forbidden theme. I think it's the thrill of doing something you know you should refrain from, but it feels so damn good. Anna and Giles must keep their relationship a secret from the faculty and administration. This story keeps you entertained with the work politics, uncertainty of doing the right thing, and the roller coaster of romance and emotions as you watch the two fall in love.

I rated The Englishman three & half leaves, because of the romance between Anna and Giles. The story did not receive a five leaves rating, because I felt the beginning of the story was slow-moving. I also thought there were too many secondary characters. It got to the point where I felt as though I needed a cheat sheet to remember who taught what or why they were in Anna's life. I also felt the additional storylines for the secondary characters took away from Anna and Giles' relationship. Nevertheless, the story improved in the second half of the book...and I fell in love with Giles.

I couldn't believe this was Nina Lewis' first book. When I looked her up on Goodreads, I was ready to read the rest of her books. This is a fabulous, well-written novel, and I look forward to reading more of her work!

~Casting for Giles & Anna~

Nina Lewis wrote her first story when she was nine years old, a drama of love and jealousy set in a circus. Her best friend and she performed it to themselves over and over again, for ever changing the dialogue, conflicts and endings. It strikes her as ironically appropriate that her first published novel is set on a college campus – the habitat of many a strange, loveable or fierce creature. When she isn’t busy training animals to jump through the hoops of college education, Nina is knee-deep in her second novel, which is set in England during the French Revolution – historical romance being her favourite genre of fiction.