Teach Me by Sloan Johnson

Teach Me by Sloan Johnson

Review by Lauren

source: personal copy; all opinions are my own

Official Summary: Two words stripped Austin Pritchard of the privileged life he’s used to. The moment he uttered the words, “I’m gay,” he realized there is no such thing as unconditional love. Now, he’s gone from traveling the world with his family to living on the streets trying to figure out how he’s going to stay in school.

A chance opportunity changes everything. Austin impresses the foreman and lands a job, but even more, he catches the eye of David Becker, who is determined to teach him that true love doesn’t come with strings. 

The only thing David had as a child was love. His family struggled to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. That has driven him to stay focused on his goals; become a tenured professor at a university and save enough money to build a home of his own. It’s not until he sees an insecure college student working on his new house that he realizes that he hasn’t planned on someone to share his life with. He’s about to learn that everything he’s already accomplished is nothing compared to the task of making Austin see that he is worthy of love.

Review: I've owned this book for awhile now, having received it in a blog swap. I finally took the time to read it and I'm glad I did! This is the first book I've read by Johnson, but I'm curious to check out more by them. I'm not someone that seeks out relationship books where this is a big age gap, as I think sometimes it's done well and sometimes it's not. In this case, I thought it worked well. Austin is a 20 year old college student living on the streets because he told his parents he was gay and they effectively told him they didn't want him part of their family. As for David, he's a 35 year old professor who has worked hard for his lot in his life, but he's always had a supportive family.

The two meet when Austin works on David's new house over the summer. Austin needs the money to help him survive the streets, and David starts to help the contractor and his workers because he wants his house ready by the time school starts again. David is immediately intrigued by Austin and wants to get to know him more, so he asks him out to dinner and even helps him find a more long-term job. He doesn't know Austin is homeless and Austin wants to keep it that way as he already feels inferior to David, despite really liking him and of course, being attracted to him.

I thought the relationship worked well. It seems as if Austin is more immature in the beginning, and he is a bit. He's never been in a relationship with a guy before and he's new to all of it, so David definitely has a lot to teach him in that regard, plus he's always trying to make sure that Austin knows he's worthy of love and that not everyone will leave him. Despite Austin being unsure in the relationship at first, he knows he wants to make his way in life and not always rely on David, so he's not an immature guy. What I liked about this book is that David has his "issues" too and there is a big moment later in the book that shows David isn't always "mature" either. They both have their moments, but they work on them together and that's the main thing.