Reviewed:
I've read many stories by Coaster2, and I have liked them all. Usually his stories are about someone working themselves up in business, or somebody rescuing a failing business or somebody moving from one business into another.
I had not come across "Oh Teacher, My Teacher" yet until I found it mentioned in Tedbiker's favorites. To my perception it is a bit of a deviation from the 'normal' Coaster story. There is very little business involved here, and we get to see a lot more of the people who are in the story, the characters are more fleshed out, we get to see who they are, and how they develop through the few months that this story plays out in. And it's very well done. I would juxtapose this story with "The Reluctant Sultan" where I was looking forward to some really interesting character development but the characters got totally eaten by the business development in the end, and ended up rather two dimensional, to my regret.
Anyway, here it is:
Rick, an enthusiastic young teacher with a special interest in history finds a job. He is most surprised when he is asked to be the date of a colleague whom most males in the school see as the ice queen. He is insecure, a little nerdy, a bit dorky, and also considers himself very inexperienced with the opposite gender. She, on the other hand is assertive, which in turn makes him even more insecure, mostly about her motivation, but also about how she might really feel about him. It does not really get through to him for Quite Some Time.
And so the relationship between them develops. I won't spoil the plot here, a little excitement is thrown in in the last third of the story with a kidnapping, that fortunately ends well (at least for everybody but the kidnappers).
This story is well developed, and excellently executed. The writing is as superb as I have come to expect from the Coaster.