We see both POVs, and Molly is a great character. Gathering the evidence, they work even more closely together. Then Molly discovers that a homophobic study by a fellow professor shows false data, and she gets Carmen to help her.

Molly is adamant about protecting this secret, plus as she becomes Carmen's teaching assistant, they work together. One day, Molly makes a discovery when she stumbles upon her statistics professor, Carmen Vaughn, being kissed by a woman. The political science department though is a deeply conservative little Brotopia, with only two women who have tenure. (1997 was my first year at university and in hindsight I can see how difficult it must have been then for LGBT to come out.)įormer LGBT activist Molly is almost 30, out and proud and a grad student in political science. I was pleasantly surprised, especially by the dealing with the topic of misogyny. Not sure what I actually expected from this novel set in 1997, but it surely wasn't this. One day my social media feed was flooded by this book, and people were singing its praises. The thing is, as the chemistry builds between them, Molly isn’t sure she wants to be a grad student anymore.if she ever did. But she absolutely refuses to get involved with a student. As the two women work together to make their case, they grow closer than Carmen ever imagined. She has no intention of coming out, least of all to Molly, a troublemaking grad student who can’t stop picking fights with the conservative faculty.īut when Molly discovers evidence implicating a homophobic colleague in a scandal, Carmen can’t ignore it-even if the subject hits too close to home. Professor Carmen Vaughn is stuck in small-town Maryland with smarmy blowhards for colleagues and ungrateful students who can’t handle her high standards. Molly decides to give a PhD a whirl but finds herself more interested in campus politics.and her strict and sexy statistics professor.

It might be the nineties, and everything’s shoulder pads, Doc Martens, and The X-Files, but people won’t budge on gay rights. Molly Cook is almost thirty, with dismal career prospects, and has given up on saving the world. A smart, opposites-attract, student-professor romance filled with nostalgia, edgy politics, and the forbidden thrills of lesbian love in the nineties.

The Love Factor by Quinn Ivins