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HaBO: Model Heroine Becomes a Teacher

You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!

This HaBO comes to us from Sara, who wants to find an older category romance:

My google-fu is weak. Help me, Habo-wan?

I’m pretty sure this is a book I read back in the mid-90s, as that’s when I did the bulk of my category romance reading, but it could have been as late as 2000-ish. I believe it would have been a non-specialized Harlequin romance – it didn’t have a super-involved plot.

The book starts out with the blond heroine retiring from a modeling career to become a teacher. She’s just done her last modeling job and she eats her first burger in forever. It’s stuck in my mind that she gets ill because she hasn’t eaten greasy food for so long – I think vomiting in the gutter happens. Our setting is New York City.

The hero is your basic kinda-stalker alphole businessman. I think he’d been obsessed with her for some time from afar and goes to some lengths to get her to go out with him, wooing her with fanciness. I think she was resistant because she thought he just wanted arm candy?

For some reason I think the aforementioned burger vomiting into a gutter was out the door of his chauffeured car at the end of his first wooing attempt. She does become a teacher and de-glamorizes. Eventually she realizes that he likes her for her and happily ever after happens.

If someone is able to identify this, wonderful. And if not I will fully understand as even among the Bitchery I would find in depth recall of 25 year old category romance beyond impressive.

I hope the heroine gets to enjoy a burger later on in the romance without having any issues. To me, that’d be the real HEA.

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  1. sara darling says:

    DING DING DING! That is totally it. I recognize the cover and synopsis. Thank you!

  2. cleo says:

    Impressive!

  3. RebeccaA says:

    Why does the blurb saying “She was going to teach deprived kids.” seem a little off to me? The pretty white lady rescues the poor downtrodden? Nothing against the author, since she might not have written the blurb and 1990 was 27 years ago, but this just strikes me as tone deaf.

  4. Rebecca says:

    As someone who did this for a while, I would say it’s a shame that “deprived” is now a dirty word. When you’re talking about kids who have never been to a zoo, or to a museum, and have no books in their homes, or are homeless and moving from shelter to shelter, or don’t taste fresh fruits and vegetables for months because they’re too expensive so they gorge on cheap junk food to prevent hunger…yes, they are deprived. Teachers can’t “rescue” them single handed (and it’s both a condescending and a dangerous fantasy to imagine that you can do that as a teacher because you can end up doing harm rather than good), but there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with specifically wanting to teach in what is euphemistically known in the US as a Title I school (i.e. a school that that receives extra funding because it has at least a certain minimum percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced price school lunch, a rough measure of poverty). If poverty were equally distributed throughout the school system so that there were only a few poor students in each school “teaching deprived kids” would be condescending. But you have to be pretty naive to not know that there are rich districts and poor districts, and making a choice about where you work as a teacher is valid.

    I get that teachers should be aware of and sensitive to students with varying cultural backgrounds, and that not being a WASP from a house with a grassy yard and a white picket fence and a Christmas tree from December 15 to January 1 does NOT automatically make you deprived. But let’s not pretend that deprivation doesn’t exist.

  5. RebeccaA says:

    Rebecca, Sorry I wrote a response and the internet ate it. Basically I am glad to have a differing opinion and that you care enough to write it. You have given me something to think about.

  6. Louise says:

    Wait, wait, someone fill me in please. Are the Title 1 Deprived Kids soooo deprived that their school can’t even find credentialed teachers, and will happily hire someone who was working as a model up until last week? Or did the book suppress the part where she drops off the face of the earth for a few years while finishing her long-abandoned BA and then topping it off with the MAT?

  7. RebeccaA says:

    The link implies that she goes straight from one to another. But maybe she has been going to school while modeling. Maybe we can convince sara darling to review it. 🙂

    “Christine Connors had decided to pack in her successful modeling career to pursue her real dream. She was going to teach deprived kids.
    Then, for the sake of her friends in the New York agency, she gave in to their persuasion and agreed to do one more job. For John Falconer, supposedly a sedate stockbroker. Except that John had devised the offer of making a television commercial simply as a way of meeting Chris. And his proposition turned out to be anything but business!”

  8. Rebecca says:

    @Louise – in 1990, I don’t know. Nowadays, probably yes. There’s a massive teacher shortage which could have something to do with the demonization of the profession, and the idea that fresh faced 22 year olds with no experience who do it for a year or two and then stop are better than more expensive trained teachers. But now I’m curious about this book. Please tell me the HEA involves her getting to pursue her dream of teaching with the added emotional and financial support of a loving and financially secure partner. That does make a hard job easier, and it would be nice to read a romance where the romantic relationship actually helps the heroine achieve a career goal instead of being a substitute for it.

  9. Alea says:

    As I recall, the heroine was headed back to school for a teaching degree and started student teaching.

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