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It's not easy for me to give this 1* only and I've thought about this long and hard. Normally I would have either not rated this at all, or given it a 2* and shrugged. However, I am a bit too angry about the way this was written for comfort and a shrug. So allow me to explain...

(there may be spoilers)

I was prepared to like this and--quite unlike American readers--I live in a country where 16 is the age of consent, even for relationships between much older adults and youths, and Anne's alleged post as a teacher in my opinion never truly floated. They crashed before she took up teaching him and there was no activity as a teacher either on the island. I didn't mind the age aspect at all, in fact I read the book for it, because I wanted to read a well-written book about just such an age-gap.

I'm not going into the numerous problems I had with basic writing skills I expect from a book, such as are relative to grammar, punctuation and style. Or that I'd expect the stream of consciousness from two people that apart in gender, experience and age to be at least somewhat different and not uniformly juvenile. I do have much more problems with the story however.

Let me state it clearly: any female shaving her legs, underarms and pits, hung up to the point of ridiculousness about natural body odours and wildly applying hair conditioner as well as being crazy about recovering a suitcase filled with beauty items while stranded on a tropical island has to have her head examined. From that moment onwards I lost every shred of respect for this female character.

Just as it rather soon started to grate on me that neither Anne, nor TJ ever had any even halfway deep conversation or addressed any of the obvious problems bound to arise between them. I had trouble believing in the aliveness and reality of both of them. TJ was too good to be true, and stayed that way, and Anne came over as shallow and immature despite all her protestations to the contrary.

The romance felt contrived, there was no build-up, Anne being too prude to even contemplate the topic realistically until the last moment and TJ is suddenly the big seducer and superb lover quite out of the blue. Anyone who had hoped for even a tiny bit of sensuality or on-screen sex will be disappointed by the way. This book is practically sex-free, even though going by the blurb you're led to believe it's one of the main topics.

What truly enervated me though was the moralising. You might expect some openmindedness from a book about a reversed May-December couple, but what liberal view at this topic there was, was mere window-dressing. It felt as forced as the turn of the heroine towards dogoodieness, while the real message below the alleged liberalism was 1) women have to have (lots) of babies, and 2) people just have to marry, then whatever they do is acceptable. Yes. That.

Nowhere were the real issues of an age-gap relationship truly taken up, even the people who were critical still behaved with a restraint I found entirely unbelievable and things proceeded too smoothly just about in every respect. After the candyfloss HEA with a marriage, multiple babies (of course the 15 y/o TJ had his semen frozen) and everybody's problem nicely solved and tucked safely into a cozy bed, I was left gnashing my teeth.

This story idea had a lot going for it, but it sure has been turned into one of the soppiest and most sugar-coated romances I read, ever. The 1* is exclusively for the excellent idea and the one or two times I laughed out loud over some particularly funny faux pas.

I can't recommend this. Especially not if someone looks for a well-written story about an age-gap couple!