Whitney Gaskell, Testing Kate

Testing Kate

Whitney Gaskell

Bantam, November 2006, $12.00

ISBN: 0553383140

When she was attending college, Kate Bennett became an orphan. To survive her grief, she accepts a job and a boyfriend, neither of which truly turn her on. A few years later as she nears thirty, Kate decides it is time to take a three meter dive into life. She quits her job, ends her relationship with nice Graham, and treks from Ithaca, New York to attend law school at Tulane University. On the travel south, she has a problem that makes her miss orientation, and she is totally unprepared for martinet Professor Hoffman's criminal law class, who tears into her shaky psyche.

Kate joins a study group, consisting of beautiful brilliant Lexi; kind hearted Jen; inane Addison; teen Dana and hunk Nick. However, Hoffman continues to terrorize her, making her first semester more difficult than necessary. The nasty Prof also gets his brand of ugliness aimed at her and her friends with a second semester class. Meanwhile, as Kate copes with Professor maliciousness and finds Nick attractive, she tries to help her friends, like Dana who attempts suicide and Jen whose secret keeps her from sharing how much she loves Addison.

TESTING KATE is an intriguing coming of age tale, starring a young woman trying to finally find herself at law school. Kate and her group are fine characters struggling at law school and with life, as the audience will want to know what happens to them. Though Hoffman is a caricature of the ugly professor, as he is too extreme, even for a despotic professor, readers will enjoy the inevitable confrontation between him and Kate in this fine pre-Katrina contemporary.