Title: Headmaster
Author: Tara Sue Me
Publisher/Year: Penguin Group Publishing 1/16/18
Length: 197 Pages
Series: Lessons from the RACK #2
Overview
Lennox MacLure, owner of the RACK Academy, has sworn off the Dominant/submissive lifestyle. Years ago, his submissive, Winnie, died in a car accident following a heated argument for which he blames himself. Guilt-ridden and emotionally closed off, Lennox sees the academy as both his punishment and penance for her death.
Mariela, a dance instructor and a natural submissive, was Winnie’s best friend and longs to help Lennox move past his grief. She’s accepted that he will never see her as anything more than a friend, but she still wants to help him acknowledge what he needs. Mariela comes up with a plan of seduction, guaranteed to unleash the Dominant he’s willfully buried—but the passion they unleash could prove to be stronger than they are ready to handle.
My Thoughts
Well i’ll be honest, it’s been a while since i read the first installment to this series so i wasn’t entirely sure what the plot line from book 1 was, however i quickly rectified that getting into the flow of this story at the mention of Andie and Fulton from book 1. So in this second installment, we have the story of Lennox, the man who created the RACK Academy and Marie, the woman that he’s hired to run the dance portion of things, and also a woman that he’s got a complicated history with.
Throughout this story, what we get is a mix of emotions with the most robust highs and lows that you can expect. We know that there’s tension between them, we felt it in book 1 (yes i remembered that finally) but as expected from our amazing author, there’s a huge obstacle in the form of a ghost that keeps them even further than arms length apart.
Lennox’s history is that he was with a woman named Winnie for a few years, she was his love and his world revolved around her. They didn’t have the easiest relationship of course, but they had a good one for a while. There was an amazing attraction between them, but the challenge was that Winnie wasn’t part of the lifestyle before him and wasn’t truly interested in it after she met him, but she was so drawn to him that she made herself pretend.
Then there’s Marie – who ironically was like a sister to Winnie. They knew each other from when they were young, and the painful thing here is that Marie saw Lennox first and she was actually part of the lifestyle and truly belonged there, but that didn’t matter to the couple. she had to grin and bear it while her friend got the life and man that she wanted.
Of course it came crashing down when Winnie and Lennox had to admit to each other that they weren’t right for each other, resulting in Winnie getting into a fatal car accident. So that leads us to where we are today in the story – seeing how these two have the same ghost in different context and it keeps them from truly holding on and living with their attraction for one another, and instead they have to live with the pain and the fact that they won’t allow their feelings to come to life.
It’s a sweet story though as you read through it. Both of these main characters are so strong that we know that they have to have a happy ending, but the forces of nature (literally in one chapter) are pushing the apart and the question becomes what will it take to get them together, and will it be enough to hold them?
True to form with Tara Sue Me, we get angst, we get hot sexy romance and we get another near fatal car crash – and similar to book one where there was a boat situation, it takes catastrophe for people to realize that maybe they need to let their baggage go. What happens here in this story is that it’s not a happy ending for everyone, not in the classic sense, and that sets up the next installment nicely since we get to see how it’s not one of the main characters from the academy that gets a plotline, but someone from the peripheral. Anyhow – it’s hot, it’s steamy and it’s really a well written story. so i hope you guys check it out and then wait for book 3 i suppose. Enjoy!