Review: Consent by Nancy Ohlin

Title: Consent
Author: Nancy Ohlin
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Rating: 2/5 Stars
Hardcover, 288 Pages
Published November 2015

Summary: Bea has a secret. Actually, she has more than one. There’s her dream for the future that she can’t tell anyone—not her father and not even her best friend, Plum. And now there’s Dane Rossi. Dane is hot, he shares Bea’s love of piano, and he believes in her. He’s also Bea’s teacher. When their passion for music crosses into passion for each other, Bea finds herself falling completely for Dane. She’s never felt so wanted, so understood, so known to her core. But the risk of discovery carries unexpected surprises that could shake Bea entirely. Bea must piece together what is and isn’t true about Dane, herself, and the most intense relationship she’s ever experienced in this absorbing novel from Nancy Ohlin, the author of Beauty.

This book intrigued me because (and I'm saying this in the least creepy way possible), I'm fascinated by the logic that people use to justify student-teacher relationships. As the summary explains, Bea is a high school senior whose music history teacher starts to help her with her piano playing, and it soon expands into something more. But when people start to get suspicious, things go south fast. 

I wasn't that crazy about this book, mainly because I felt it was so rushed. I definitely felt a major insta-love factor between Bea and Dane pretty much right off the bat. It's one thing for her to be attracted to a cute new teacher, but it's an entirely different thing for him to start reciprocating those feelings when only knowing her for a week or so at that point. I just felt that they definitely fell in mad, passionate love way too quickly. There was practically no romance progression. First they were nothing, and then they were everything. It felt entirely too unrealistic.

(Spoilers ahead so please skip to the next paragraph if you haven't read the book yet!) The other thing that I really didn't like was the fact that the entire "being found out" situation cleared up way too quickly. There wasn't even a trial or anything big - the situation cleared up entirely on its own. I just feel that the book should've been centered more around their relationship and the repercussions of being caught, since that's what the summary makes it seem like the entire book is about. In reality, the sex scandal is just a 2 or so chapter blip on the radar. (Long story short, the summary of the book makes it seem like the whole secret thing is going to be a big facet of the book, but I felt like it really wasn't.) There's also the fact that you don't even know what ends up happening with the kid that busted their secret, or what happens to Bea and Dane further down the line. You're just left with a lot of questions, and I didn't like it all that much.

All in all, I don't have much more to say about this book. Consent just really wasn't for me, but if the summary intrigues you, I still encourage you to give the book a try. Just because it wasn't my cup of tea doesn't mean that it can't be yours. I just felt that the book wasn't anything like the summary said it would be, and I wasn't all that interested in it.