Review: Lessons in Love: A Cambridge Fellows Mystery by Charlie Cochrane

 Review by Chronic Betty

St. Bride’s College, Cambridge, England, 1905.

Jonty Stewart is handsome and outgoing, with blood as blue as his eyes. When he takes up a teaching post at the college where he studied, his dynamic style acts as an agent for change within the archaic institution. He also has a catalytic effect on Orlando Coppersmith.

Orlando is a brilliant, introverted mathematician with very little experience of life outside the university walls. He strikes up an alliance with Jonty and soon finds himself heart-deep in feelings he’s never experienced. Before long their friendship blossoms into more than either man had hoped.

Then a student is murdered within St. Bride’s. Then another…and another. All the victims have one thing in common: a penchant for men. Asked by the police to serve as their eyes and ears within the college, Jonty and Orlando risk exposing a love affair that could make them the killer’s next target.

This book has been previously published and has been revised and expanded from its original release.

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Product Warnings

Contains sensual m/m lovemaking and men in punts.

I love Samhain's product warnings, don't you?  I think I've read more of their books based on the warning than the blurb.

Jonty Stewart and Orlando Coppersmith meet when Jonty sits in Orlando's chair.  They soon become inseparable, first as friends, and then slowly as something more.  During this time a murderer starts targeting homosexual students at St. Bride's.  Suddenly their relationship is dangerous on three fronts:  Jonty knows he's homosexual, but Orlando has been basically asexual until this point in his life.  Is this what he wants?  People are dying on campus for being homosexual, do they want to risk catching the murderer's attention?  And, homosexual acts were illegal in England in 1905.  Do they want to risk hard labor if they're caught?

I'd heard good things about this book, and I was eager to give it a try.  But I had a very hard time connecting, mostly because of the POV.  It was written in 3rd person omniscient, which I generally don't like.  And in a book where a large part of the focus is the romance, that distance doesn't serve the story well.

I did get more involved as the mystery plot drove to its conclusion.  But I also think that the last third or so of the book was more interesting because we were spending more time with Orlando's thoughts than Jonty's.  This was really Orlando's book.  He grows the most, changing from a complete loner to a man with a dear friend and lover.  He also has to shift his thinking away from his very prudish upbringing to accept any sexual feelings at all, let alone feelings for another man.  And yet it seems like we spend a lot more time in the early part of the book in Jonty's head, as he dances around trying to slowly seduce Orlando, while at the same time trying to preserve his "precious innocence."  (Jonty's interest in Orlando's complete innocence and unworldliness was a bit squicky to me.)


In the end we finally get to see Orlando understand what he really wants and be the hero by rescuing Jonty.  And I think that's as much of the reason why I liked the end of the book as all the action in catching the killer. We're finally getting to experience the important stuff through the right pair of eyes.


I struggled with this one, but don't take my opinion for gospel.  There are eight books in this series now, so apparently many others liked it.  I caught a spoiler by accident for book 8, and now I'm trying to decide if I want to push through all the books in between, hoping they get better, or if I should break a cherished reading law and just jump to the good bit.  That spoiler sounded wowza.


I give it a C-.  Not horrible, but not quite in the middle of the pack, either.  I was able to borrow this one, now that lending is available for the Kindle.  Unfortunately, I have yet to find a m/m romance available for download through the library.