Book 2 of the Winchester Academy series. Serious brain candy and just good ol’ fun that comes in threes. Reminds me of that old Amish joke I was told by John Hershberger who had the farm up north on 643: How come Amish men can’t satisfy their wives? Because it take two Mennonite! (It’s even funnier when an Amish guy tells it because of the well-known rivalry between these two denominations!)
Trust me. Porter and Beckett are more than enough for Kempton Carlisle, the ruling queen of Winchester Academy!
Kempton has been living a lie. She hasn’t climbed the school’s social ladder by strategically sleeping with popular guys. No, she discovered those with certain… secrets that couldn’t be aired in public. So she used them to spread well-crafted rumors that gained her popularity in all the right circles… until she “graduated” to older, richer guys with nobility in their pedigrees. So why hasn’t she done what other varsity cheerleaders have done? Hooked up with the star quarterback? Not that Beckett would mind because he’s had his eyes on her ever since he started school.
But he now has a big brother, a newly hired professor, to compete against. And he’s also Kempton’s instructor.
A disastrous, one-night hook-up made as a dare throws all three of them in an empty, darkened guest bedroom where Kempton loses her V-card to the wrong brother!
While the other one is watching!…
But as Beckett once said: he and his brother share everything!…
Really?
I guess you’ll have to find out because I won’t be spoiling the rest of the story ‘cause it’s too much fun!
Length and pace: Like its predecessor, this is definitely novella that does have a template-ish main plot line. But Madison Faye already has told us that this is brain candy to begin with, so I took her for her word. It proceeds along like “Bait” except we now have two brothers to contend with. The pace is pretty good without rushing.
Characters: Kempton’s character profile is quite sassy in that she was able to develop her on-campus persona so easily and maintain it with an iron scepter. No wonder she was the queen on campus! But instead of being the bully, she spent more time with her friends, one being Anastasia from “Bait” who happens to be Kempton’s roomie. Both lie for the other when each other sneaks out to have a tête-à-tête with their boyfriends. As for Porter and Beckett, okay, I get it that they’re brothers, but Faye could have done a better job in crafting these two characters. It was more difficult to get into these guys because they were too much alike, and Porter seemed to get more air time than his younger sibling. I think it could have been better because I already thought of better descriptives for each of them.
World-creation: Madison Faye maintained the upper-class façade of Winchester Academy with very little interaction with this school in this tale. Maybe it’s because more time was spend off-campus rather than on-campus, but I think this story could have gone on longer with better fleshing-out of this campus.
Continuity and editing: Editing was pretty much the same… More work could have been done to clean up punctuation, grammar, and word-crafting. I noticed too much repetition of terms, even within the same paragraph. Could had done a better job here.
Realism: I have to give Madison Faye credit for good realism flow. (This is when the obvious happens based on the world-crafting. In other words, less deus-ex-machina because no one is pulling a rabbit out of his hat!) The higher the class classification, the greater the chance for corruption and evil deeds. I wish this book’s villain could had been nastier. After all, Porter used to work with him when they were on Wall Street, fleecing clients and such! Porter knew what this guy could do!
Would I recommend this book? I didn’t give it as high a rating as I did “Bait”, but it was amusing. I would get it for continuity’s sake at least. It delivered brain candy as advertised. I’m good with that!