Emily Durkheim, The Miseducation of Tabitha Stone

The Miseducation of Tabitha Stone

Emily Durkheim

Cheek, December 2006, $12.95

ISBN: 0352340711

In Los Angeles, her best friends Jessica and Brad throw an all night twenty-fourth birthday party for Tabitha Stone at the Trash Lounge. She comes home to the family mansion in the Hollywood Hills at seven the next morning to find Daddy waiting for her, looking sad and disappointed. She apologizes when she realizes she failed to share her birthday dinner with her father, as promised. That afternoon, she awakens to make amends, but Daddy blames himself. They argue over her six years of failed schooling and how her mom walked out on them. Daddy decides she is going back to school without credit cards to earn her degree at Adirondack University in Upstate New York by her twenty-fifth birthday or he will cut her off without a penny.

Tabby arrives in New York already humiliated having flown coach. She meets senior Jake who promises to show her the ropes, hoping she will get more. By day one she is in trouble with her English Lit professor over Duran Duran vs. the romantic poets, and her advanced cognitive psychology professor Mark, Jake's brother. She is attracted to both men, but Mark seems to hate her, as he warns her she is bad for his sibling, especially since he wants to flunk her out of school, that is when he is not admiring her physical assets and her caring about others.

This is a fun torrid contemporary academic romance starring an older version of the fun loving Cher Horowitz from Silverstone's Clueless. Tabby must choose between two brothers, who she likes very much, not realizing that one of them will do anything for the other, including sacrificing his heart. THE MISEDUCATION OF TABITHA STONE is cheeky humor and plenty of heat inside a fun college romance.