Lilibet Bombshell's Reviews > Burn for Me

Rating: 4 Stars

It’s such a normalized thing in our society to see men in their thirties (and even forties) checking out college-age girls when walking down the street or in a grocery store or at the park… Don’t lie. You’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. We’ve all seen it.

What makes people uncomfortable, and what people don’t like to talk too much about, is how women in their thirties and forties are sometimes doing the exact same thing: checking out those college-age boys (and girls, don’t lie) at the park as they toss footballs back and forth, or play with a slack line, or just mess around with a grill cooking for their friends. We don’t like to think about it because thinking about women that could be old enough to be proper moms (or, since I was a mom at 21, old enough to be a college kid’s mom) lusting after adults younger than us makes some of us really uncomfortable… but yet we’re so used to men lusting after younger adults that as long as they’re legal we’re not usually too bothered.

And that power shift--that tilt of sexual dynamic is what makes “Burn For Me” so friggin’ HOT. I really clinged onto Everly West as a character. I’m older than her now and I never made it to professor, but I was in undergrad when I was her age, and I very often got mistaken for the class professor at the beginning of each semester when there was supposed to be a female professor, and I was often left in charge of the class if the professor needed to duck out because I was the most mature and usually best student in the class. And, being a full believer in “dressing for the job you want and not the job you have” (and me wanting to teach community college), I dressed in trendy, business casual clothes everyday, including heels quite often. Back then I was thinner, and most boys in undergrad haven’t learned yet how to disguise the way they stare at you. And, even though I was in my thirties back then, even some male professors didn’t know how to keep their eyes where they belonged, either.

So I sympathize for Everly West. Her career peaked early, she had thrown her best years into her career, and now she’s in her thirties and feels like she’s left with dregs of adult men to choose from if she wants to form some sort of semblance of love and family now that she has the time. But she’s only human, and of course she’s looked at the college boys once or twice or who-knows-how-many-times. (Don’t worry, Everly, I don’t blame you!) She’s never had time to figure out exactly what she wants and doesn’t know how to get it… and then an angry, sharp, cut, rough, and gorgeous ghost from her past walks into her Journalism class and takes the last seat. And she knows she’s effed.

This book takes a little while to find its footing: I’m not going to lie. I’d say the first 20% of the book or so is a bit rough. But it’s Sara Cate, and if there’s anyone who I trust to pull everyone out of a rough start, it’s Sara. I think it’s because it took a long time to reconcile that although Cullen and Everly couldn’t be more different as individuals, they’re very much the same deep inside--like all those years ago when they made eye contact they were cocooned inside different chrysalises so they could undergo whatever they had to go through to make sure that one day they could find their way back to one another because they would need one another. They had unfinished business and neither Everly nor Cullen was going to be able to move on until they crashed back together.

YES, this book is about hot reverse age-gap romance, spicy af scenes, and a little prof/student action, but underneath it all are two souls who got stuck in time in a courtroom eight years before this book even began. These two were always meant to meet where two trails become one and to walk it together after being alone for too long. They just had to go through so much to get there it left them both with a great many scars, within and without, to work through to get to the point where they could finally take those steps together, hand-in-hand. And yeah, it’s not conventional. But who the heck cares? In the end, who the heck really cares? If a man can have a girlfriend ten or twenty years younger than him, then why can’t a woman?

Shut up, Chad. No one asked you.