Reviewed by Kat
TITLE: Class Act
AUTHOR: Gianni Holmes
PUBLISHER: Coco Nutz Publishing
LENGTH: 418 pages
RELEASE DATE: October 11, 2022
BLURB:
From USA Today Bestselling Author Gianni Holmes comes a heartfelt, forbidden, teacher-student stand-alone romance.
Abe Cooper is a triple threat.
He’s my best friend’s father.
He’s the football coach at my high school.
And he’s a married man.
His marriage is on the rocks and he could lose his job for the way he looks at me.
I could lose my only friend in the world.
I know I should stay away instead of flirt with him.
But all the cons don’t outweigh how I feel when I’m with him.
When my home situation gets worse, Abe is there for me. But what we do under his roof when everyone’s asleep makes me feel guilty.
Now his daughter, my closest friend, knows he’s stepping outside his marriage and she’s hellbent to find out who I am.
How long can we keep us a secret and how dare we be happy together when it might hurt the ones we love?
Class Act is a 100k+ stand-alone MM romance between a teacher and a student in senior year of high school. It contains a huge age gap and cheating, but there’s no cheating between the MM couple. All characters are 18+.
REVIEW:
Cheating is a tricky/risky topic. Add in the taboo of a student/teacher relationship and usually you would get cold and wet from skating on extremely thin ice. But when you are as talented an author as Gianni Holmes is you can take a risk like this and it pays off.
Emery Cannon is hoping that his new school will give him the break he needs to finally graduate from high school and get far, far away from his abusive, homophobic, drunken father. An added bonus is that he has an amazing new best friend Mandy and they are both on the cheerleader squad together, a dream he’s held dear for years but never thought would happen. They even allow him to dress in the feminine uniform that is truly him. When Mandy insists that her dad, Abe, their high school football coach, take Emery to the ER after it is clear that his father went postal on him, Abe realizes he can no longer ignore and refuse the boy that has gotten under his skin. But will Abe lose everything for the sake of love?
I really worried that this book would be so wrong for me. It covered things that generally are a definite no-go for me. Teacher/student trysts are really hard to read and I usually can’t stomach them. And cheating on your wife, with your high school daughter’s best friend who is in an extremely fragile place in life, is even worse. But I knew that Gianni was an accomplished and talented author who got me to fall in love with a gang of ruthless but honorable motor cycle club killers so I decided to give it a try and then I couldn’t set this book down! Which is saying a lot to read a 418 page novel in one afternoon/evening/night! It is the gripping tale of found love and tenderness that both men (and yes Emery is still a HS student but he is 19 and was basically on his own providing for himself) needed and deserved.
In the afterword the author shared so hard truths about how/why this novel came about. I highly recommend that you take the time to read that part too. It makes this poignant and gripping novel even more real.
I absolutely loved that this author didn’t cut corners but developed a complete story and the epilogue was truly appreciated. I got what I really needed in a wrap up of a standalone book. Eight years later let us see and appreciate what was happening in their lives and that it all really was worth the risks they took. They truly got their HEA and there was no questions left. Fabulous novel that you won’t be able to sit down once you start it!
RATING: 
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