Undercover Professor

Undercover Professor
by December Gephart
Rating: 4 of 5 stars

My Review:
This is a new author for me and I really liked this book. I wish I had an empty afternoon where I could have read the book in one sitting. As it was, I only got a chapter or two in at a time.

Lucy is working hard to get her degree, further her career and fulfill her other life goals of marriage and a family. She's been burned so many times before, in lots of unique ways, that she has a whole list of what kind of person she'll be in a relationship with. Nothing too out of the ordinary. Things that we'd all put pretty high on the priority list. She's even got a guy that seems to meet the whole list. But no zing from him. A kiss from him was "like he was swashbuckling her mouth". Although swashbuckling looks can be nice, thinking about a kiss described like that sort of made me vomit in my mouth.

But when she meets and is attracted to Andy, things get complicated because he seems to break almost every requirement from her list. Lucy has a very open personality and is honest about her attraction to Andy and we see a lot of her internal debate. And I loved some of the lines:

"She was too warm with the sweatshirt and she considered pulling it off. But then, what if - oops - her tank top came off with it? And then maybe his shirt would be ripped off too, and the next thing you know, naked."

Andy actually fulfills Lucy's requirements just fine except for the big one - no lying. Which is why it looks like everything else is wrong with him. But these two have so much in common and have such a good time together that they just can't stay away. They like the same books and music. They have a good time going out together and talking. The lead up to their realization that they love each other was very natural and well written.

I felt like the secondary characters were a little flat - mostly used just as plot devices. Lucy's cousin, Becca, is in a lot of scenes and I liked her when she was interacting with Lucy. But when she's around Andy, I just had trouble liking her. It felt a little too unnatural to the rest of her personality - like her version of crazy can just turn on and off. Lucy was almost, vaguely cheating on her sort-of-boyfriend Dell that I had a twinge or two of "oh no", but he was such a flat, uninteresting person that I just didn't really care. I was glad Becca and Dell both ended up resolved by the end of the book.

The sexy-times were hot and enjoyable, but not overly explicit. I thought Andy/Drew did a really good job of making things right at the end. This was a cute book with an entertaining premise and I'll be happy to read more from this author in the future.