Isla Chiu, $2.99
Contemporary Romance, 2021

Cheryl, our heroine, discovers her boyfriend of three years cheating on her, so she goes ahead and sleeps with a hot guy with tight abs. I approve… were not for the fact that this mumu is so drunk that she doesn’t remember a thing about the glorious benediction. He turns out to be Professor McCarthy, the calculus teacher of hers, so oh boy, does this mean that he’d take a calculator and use it to probe the depths of her amazing personality?

Sadly, no. Isla Chiu’s Professor is a new adult romance, not a work of erotica, so the closest it ever comes to delivery the sexy is via the cover. Cheryl is constantly complaining, bitching, and whining about everything and anything, when she isn’t second-guessing herself and going back and forth over everything in a most exhausting manner. The cherry on top is her vapid efforts to impersonate an actual college student, dropping things like “Oh jeez!” like she’s Steve Buscemi in a super red cap yelling “How do you do, fellow kids?” from the back of the room.

By the time I finish this story, I feel like I’ve just finished running a marathon I am ill-prepared for. Having to live inside Cheryl’s head, even if it’s for a short time because this is a short story, is a pretty painful and soul-draining experience, and it’s not something I’d like to relive anytime soon.

Well, there is one good thing about this story, aside from the hot guy on the cover: this thing ends quickly, and in this case, it is a quick and merciful reprieve. Any longer and Professor would be an excruciating trapped-in-an-elevator experience with a vapid and unlikable protagonist. The D in this PhD stands for “do not want” instead of, you know, other more fun things that begin with that letter.