What I Did for Love
Mickey J Corrigan
Published by: Bloodhound Books
Publication date: October 28th 2019
Genres: Adult, Romance, Suspense
What happens when a teacher falls for her student?
After her seventeen-year-old student fails to live up to his potential in class, Cathriona O’Hale conducts a parent teacher meeting with the boy’s widowed father. He is attractive, intelligent, and exceedingly wealthy, everything an unmarried middle-aged woman would normally find appealing.
But Cath is not your average forty-something. She’s a wild card who has a crush on the man’s teenage son.
Cath finds herself juggling father and son while battling the true source of her lust and forbidden love. So when the father of the object of her obsession proposes, she has a choice to make:
Love or crime?
And when her decision is made, the consequences might just be deadly…
Author Bio:
Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes pulp fiction, literary crime, and psychological thrillers. Her stories have been called “gritty realism,” “oh so compulsive” reads, and “bizarre but believable.” Her novellas and novels have been released by publishers in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Salt Publishing in the UK released her satirical crime novel about a school shooting in 2017. Visit at www.mickeyjcorrigan.com
My Review
When I started reading this book, my first thought was Lolita. Except, in this case, we have a middle-aged female teacher who lusts after her students. The book tells the story of her love for one of her 17-year-old students and the relationship that she develops with his father. Unsurprisingly, the author notes that Lolita is one of her favourite books. That's not to say that What I Did For Love is a retelling, instead it takes its storyline in its own direction.
Cathriona tries to make us sympathetic to her situation. Of course, if you stop and think about it for all of a second, you know that there is nothing to be sympathetic for here. There is nothing in her plan that is 'right' from the seduction of the older man to get close to the son, the playing with the son's emotions and then her ultimate plan so that she can be with the son. Of course, the joy of it is that you do find yourself being swept along with it until you consider what it is she is doing.
I think that I was left with as many questions as answers by the end of the book, but I suspect that was intentional. She tells us what the Dad's plans are, but really we have only her interpretation to go on. She's an unreliable narrator at best, but as someone who tells us frequently that she longs to be an author and has drafted versions of the story with parts changed or added to, who knows what the truth really is. There are a couple of points towards the end of the book that made me wonder if that was really what the other characters intended or felt or just what she wanted to believe or see. I won't give specifics to avoid spoilers.
This book won't be for everyone, mostly down to the subject matter. But if you can get past that and really I suggest that you try, then this is a really good read. Thought-provoking, interesting and gripping you will find it hard to put down, I did.
Thanks for being on the tour, Kelly! This sounds like a unique, intense read!
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