I've never been a fan of historical romance, no matter how erotic or well written. The books always included words that hadn't been used for at least one hundred years, and I spent most of my reading time with a dictionary open on my lap so I knew just what they were talking about! But School for Virgins isn't one of those books. Ms. Swann realizes that not everyone knows exactly what was said in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In fact, most of us don't care what was said. We got the book for the story, not a lesson in vocabulary.

In School for Virgins, Ms. Swann explains just what a woman can do to ensure that her husband won't stray from her side.

What would you do if your daughter got engaged and you knew that a virginal wife isn't exactly what all men want? You understand the problems of not being what your husband wants in the marriage bed, and you know the pain of infidelity. You don't want your daughter to suffer from the same thing. I'll tell you what the people in Ms. Swann's School for Virgins did. They packed their daughters off and sent them to Ms. Helen Fairchild.

Ms. Fairchild runs a charm school for young virgins about to be wed. There they learn how to properly address invitations, make a guest list of all the right people, how to run a house, and--most importantly--they learn how to please their husbands in every way in the bedroom. She uses very lifelike mannequins for her "girls" to practice on while she talks them through everything.

To open her school, she had to take a loan out from the bank, and she's slowly been paying it back at a faster rate than her banker had planned on. When he tells her he'll call in the loan if she doesn't become his mistress, she scrambles to find someone else to loan her the money so she can avoid a disgusting fate. She stalks into Jack Langton's office and demands he loan her the money. She puts her school up as collateral for the loan and won't take no for an answer.

Jack loans her the money, and makes himself her partner in the school. He had no idea just what he'd signed up for when he insisted that he get half the profits of her school. Jack draws up papers for himself on the value of the school and the expected profits for the next year. Once he's done, he decides to run them over to the school himself instead of finding a messenger to do it. He finds himself in a hidden room, and he sees Helen teaching three young girls how to please a man orally. When Helen moves out of his line of sight, Jack discovers that his own new fiancée is one of Helen's students!

When Jack asks Helen for lessons on how to please a woman, what ensues is hot enough to fry your motherboard! Mix one headstrong woman with a determined man who has one part lust and two parts caring, and what comes out is light, fluffy, and romantic.

Ms. Swann debuted among rave reviews with Sunlit, and she proved herself again with this erotic historical. I swept through it in one night, and immediately went back to re-read it. This is the kind of book you can sink your teeth into and not feel the least bit guilty about it in the morning!

Reviewed by Marissa
© February 2005