Review: Loving Mr. Daniels by Brittainy C. Cherry

Title: Loving Mr. Daniels

Authors: Brittainy C. Cherry

Genre: New Adult, Romance, Contemporary

Publisher: BCherry Books Publishing

Release Date: May 11^th 2014

Format: E-book

Source: Bought

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To Whom it May Concern,
It was easy to call us forbidden and harder to call us soulmates. Yet I believed we were both. Forbidden soulmates.
When I arrived to Edgewood, Wisconsin I didn’t plan to find him. I didn't plan to stumble into Joe's bar and have Daniel's music stir up my emotions. I had no clue that his voice would make my hurts forget their own sorrow. I had no idea that my happiness would remember its own bliss.
When I started senior year at my new school, I wasn’t prepared to call him Mr. Daniels, but sometimes life happens at the wrong time for all the right reasons.
Our love story wasn’t only about the physical connection.
It was about family. It was about loss. It was about being alive. It was silly. It was painful. It was mourning. It was laughter.
It was ours.
And for those reasons alone, I would never apologize for loving Mr. Daniels.
-Ashlyn Jennings

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After reading Unveiled Innocence by Ella Frank and discovering that there are in fact many books of this topic (teacher-student seems to be a favorite theme for New Adult novels) I decided to read another one.
In Loving Mr. Daniels we meet Ashlyn Jennings, a girl of 19yrs old, who is dealing with the death of her twin sister and at the same time, trying to resolve some problems with her parents. She moves with her father and a new family, and then she meets Daniel. The chemistry is instantly, and both feel in the same way.
Later she finds the truth. He is Mr. Daniels. Her English teacher.
I had read so many good comments about this book, that this was the main reason why I picked this up instead of others. This was a lot cleaner that Unveiled Innocence, but it didn’t touch a lot the dilemma of a forbidden relationship. They meet outside school, and begin their relationship outside the classroom. Later, when they find out the truth, it doesn’t change the situation, on the contrary, it continues almost in the same way. Also, the age difference is almost none, only three years. Like the author says, or Ashlyn says, the problem wasn’t the age, but his profession, which at the end, didn’t affect the relationship at all. So if you’re looking something more “forbidden” and with more moral issues, this is not the book you want to read.
Something I realized, and I wasn’t the only one, since I read a review on Goodreads that said the same thing, it seems that all the characters in this novel were in danger of dying!!! I understand that one of the reasons why Ashlyn and Daniel connected so quickly was because both of them missed somebody, or had lost somebody they loved, but the number of deaths in this book can compete with George Martin’s books! I can count at least five deaths and maybe I’m missing someone. And there was a death I didn’t understand at all. It was completely unnecessary. So maybe the main topic of this book should have been how two people fall in love and deal with their losses, and not a forbidden relationship of a student and a teacher.
What I liked the most was the letters of Ashlyn’s sister. And again, this is something I have read in another books and seen before in movies. So, this isn’t something new. Also, the letters we have the opportunity to read are just a few, so it is a little bit disappointing if you’re expecting more.
Like many other stories of this kind, the ending is just like you expected. At the end, you find people coming to terms and finally coping with the death of their loved ones. Lots of love, a wedding, and some letters. That’s all.
I really liked the story at the beginning. I even cried a little bit with Gabrielle’s first letter, and I really liked the way they meet, and that in comparison with Unveiled Innocence, the secondary characters had more participation in the story. I liked the songs at the beginning of each chapter, and that we could see both point of views. But I ended up a little bit disappointed. I was expecting more, and I didn’t get it. Overall, it is a good book, but not a favorite.