The Professor's Dragon

I've mostly been viewing this series as more comedy than romance, but still, it was the romance herein that dropped the rating. I had thought about skipping this book in the series. I don't actually like age gap romances - or all the tropes that tend to come with them. And, no, knowing that Dustin, who appears much younger, is actually a centuries old dragon, doesn't really help that for me.

In fact, it just makes his behavior all the more unpalatable for me because he's old enough that he should know better. Even with all the human culture that he's had to learn.

So, beyond the age gap romance, I truly hate teacher/student romances. The only good thing here for me is the fact that the story doesn't really start until after Dustin is no longer Rob's teacher - though he still is a teacher at the college that Dustin goes to and for me that is all kinds of grey area.

The story starts two years in the past when Dustin first falls in insta-love with his professor. Then we are very quickly (first chapter quickly) brought up to ‘now' when Dustin is no longer a student of Rob's but is still going to the college he teaches at. Things happen and Rob set's ‘conditions' to Rob and Dustin getting to know each other. For two weeks there shall be: no inappropriate touching, no kissing and no interaction at college.

All conditions that Dustin breaks. (Sure, Rob is, mostly, right there with him, but almost invariably Dustin starts and Rob falls into the trope of ‘too weak to stop' - which is a whole other subject of issues for me.) Dustin constantly pushes boundaries - something that he pretty proudly proclaims - and just shows a total lack of respect for the situation that he and Rob are in - despite his claims to the contrary. (The way it's presented, it's also mostly Dustin's actions that causes a real strain to be put on the relationship that Rob has with, seemingly, his only friend at the college.)

Dustin claims that he respects Rob and wants their relationship to be built on trust and respect, but his actions pretty clearly indicate differently - and also indicates a complete lack of caring what this could do to Rob's career.

Finally, more time should have been spent on those two weeks where Dustin and Rob were getting to know each other without sex involved. Because they are barely glossed over, we see Dustin pushing boundaries - again! - because he ‘had a rough day' and then all these thoughts about how much they talked about and how well they grew to know each other, talking about things that they never talked about with anyone else before. But we don't actually get to see it! So most of the relationship comes off as just sex. (Which, to be fair, wasn't quite as hilarious as the sex in the previous books.)

So... You know what, I just talked this book down another star. I didn't hate it, but there was a lot wrong here to me.