Reviewed by Dan
TITLE: The Tutor
AUTHOR: Bonnie Dee
PUBLISHER: Self-Published
LENGTH: 184 Pages
BLURB:
Gothic romance with a twist.
Elements of The Sound of Music, The Enchanted Garden, Jane Eyre, and “true” ghost hunting shows make this story feel familiar. Gay love makes it unique.
Seeing an ad for a position at a Yorkshire estate, typesetter Graham Cowrie decides to make an upward career move by passing himself off as a tutor. How hard can it be to teach a few subjects to a pair of nine-year-old boys? But on his arrival at the ancient house, he finds the staff creepy, the twins odd, and the widowed master temporarily absent.
His first meeting with brooding, stern, but oh-so-attractive, Sir Richard doesn’t go well, but with no other prospects vying for the teaching position, Graham manages to keep it. His mission soon becomes clear, break down the walls of reserve both father and sons have erected and attempt to bridge the gap between them.
But strange sounds, sights and experiences keep Graham on edge until he finally admits the Hall is haunted by two entities with very different agendas. Graham works to appease one and combat the other while protecting the broken family he’s grown to care for.
REVIEW:
Bonnie Dee has brought us an interesting take on the gothic romance novel. Instead of a young girl going to a scary mansion in England’s moors, this time we have a young man going as a tutor. The story does indeed seem kind of like a merge of several different stories and scenarios, but it works. I liked it, and I was hooked from the first page!
Graham Cowrie is on his way to a very remote estate in Yorkshire, but it is under false pretenses. Graham has blatantly lied about his background, his education and his experience. He is actually a former prostitute from the lowest classes of England, who was “saved” by an older man who kept him as a lover and taught him far beyond what he would normally know. When the older man grew tired of him and threw him over for a “younger” model, he became a typesetter. But that wasn’t enough for him, so he lied and now must face the consequences.
Arriving at the remote estate he finds a very unwelcoming staff, who are in fact, down right cold to him. He meets the two young twins that he is to tutor, and they are even more unwelcoming. One of them doesn’t even speak!
Something beyond the unwelcoming humans is at work in the mansion. The house has been around for centuries, starting as a castle keep, and eventually having new wings added in the centuries following the need for castle walls. All of it is centuries old though, and somehow Graham can feel the ghosts in residence!
When Graham meets Sir Richard, his new employer, things don’t go so well, but Graham instantly is attracted to the man. Will Graham be able to keep the job, or will Sir Richard discover his duplicity? What really happened to Sir Richard’s wife? And what about the ghosts, will they scare him away?
I really liked the book. I would like to have seen just a bit more ghost action, but overall the story was very well written and builds to a crescendo at the very end of the book. I would recommend this book to anyone liking a historical piece, complete with ghosts, scary servants and a sexy Lord/Servant relationship.
RATING: 
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