Break Your Heart

June 1, 2015
Helms’s tale of a black math major’s grand passion for her Asian cryptography professor, a loose sequel to Scratch, feels like a flashback to 1950s category romance with a multicultural veneer. Megan Porter is obsessed with going to parties and sleeping with cute boys; she’s never noticed the connection between math and cryptoanalysis, and she’s unaware of the hottie in her own department, professor Nick Muramoto, until he walks into class. As a portrayal of an overachiever, this setup is unconvincing. Megan makes some gestures to escape her inappropriate attraction to her professor—thinking of dropping the class, redirecting her attention to guys her own age, seeking the support of friends —but just can’t help herself. Nick, meanwhile, groans, “No. Absolutely not,” and “God, I shouldn’t,” even as he most enthusiastically does. Why? Well, Megan is hot too. Apparently, no more justification is needed. The portrayal of Megan as promiscuous, sassy, and clueless will leave women in STEM fields gritting their teeth. Agent: Courtney Miller-Callihan, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates.

August 1, 2015
African American math major Megan Porter is instantly attracted to Dr. Nick Muramoto. Which would be great, except that she meets him on the first day of her last semester of college, when he announces to her class that he is replacing their cryptography professor. Their relationship grows slowly through encoded messages exchanged via assignments and e-mails, but once they give in to their attraction, it quickly builds. However, if anyone finds out, it could be the end of Nick's career and could ruin Megan's chances at graduate school. Megan is also struggling with her mother's addiction to painkillers and the impact that is having on her parents' relationship with each other and her relationship with them. The hot-for-teacher plot seems to be showing up in a lot of NA romances lately, but when handled right, as Helms does, it's more about conflict between the characters than scandal. Readers who enjoyed Scratch (2014) will be excited by this linked novel, but Helms' latest also stands alone.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)