L A Wright

Jen is a 34-year-old single woman from Sydney, Australia. She teaches in an Anglican girls' school and periodically returns to her hometown to visit her parents and siblings, who have never moved far from home and family tradition.

Jen's story is split between two events - a bicycling holiday in France and an incident of bullying a student by a cadre of "mean girls" in her classroom. The events occur about a year apart, and much of the book jumps between two timelines - a mechanism I don't enjoy, but once I got used to it, it worked well here.

On her first day in France, Jen meets Abi, a Scottish, single, vivacious, and out-and-proud lesbian. Their tour group, consisting of married couples, throws the two women together. Fortunately, they hit it off.

In the other storyline, a student in one of Jen's classes is cruelly outed as queer, and when Jen tries to take the bullies to task, she is blocked by the school at every turn, as being queer goes against the Christian principles the school prides itself on.

Jen and Abi are very likeable characters. As the story begins, Jen considers herself straight and has never been particularly lucky in love. Over time, we learn of events in Jen's past that led her to suppress her true sexuality.

The romance between Abi and Jen is a very slow burn as Jen has a lot of changes to make in her life before she can even admit to her feelings. This is not usually something I enjoy reading, but I found much of Jen's struggle resonated with events in my past, to the point where not even fade-to-black intimate scenes could diminish my enjoyment of her story.… (més)