Bobby Blanchard, Lesbian Gym Teacher

Career-Girl #2

by Monica Nolan

Wayward Schoolgirls! Wild Passions! And Winning At Any Cost. . .

Welcome to Metamora Academy for Girls, where some rules are made to be broken.

Roberta "Bobby" Blanchard is crushed when an accident forces her to leave the glamorous world of professional field hockey. As Games Mistress at Metamora Academy, she's dismayed to learn that sports take a backseat to literary and artistic pursuits. But Bobby's arrival at the elite boarding school will unearth more than one girl's hidden abilities, and spur some ardent rivalry between pupils--and teachers--on and off the field, including. . .


Laura Burnham--the bohemian Art Mistress, sultry, seductive. . .and married. . .


Enid Butler--the Math Mistress has a natural eye for figures. . .


Mrs. Mona Gilvang--housekeeper and resident "merry widow," she stirs up more than hot cocoa. . .


Carole Kerwin and Angela Cohen O'Shea--the student body's most promising athletes have nothing in common. . .until they join Bobby's team. . .


Miss Craybill--Could Metamora's revered headmistress have something sinister to hide?


With a fearsome field hockey team to build and the suspicious death of the former Math Mistress to solve, Bobby Blanchard has her hands full. But the intrepid gym teacher has a knack for uncovering every girl's secrets. And along the way, she may just learn some thrilling lessons about love. . .

Genres: Fiction, Queer, LGBT, Lesbian, Romance, Mystery, Historical Fiction

305 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 15, 2010

About the author

Monica Nolan is the author of Lois Lenz Lesbian Secretary, Bobby Blanchard Lesbian Gym Teacher, Maxie Mainwaring Lesbian Dilettante, and Dolly Dingle Lesbian Landlady which will hit the shelves October, 2014. She and co-author Alisa Surkis were nominated for a Lambda Literary award for The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories, which won the Diagram Prize for oddest title. She blogs about lesbian pulp fiction at Pulp and Pep. She has experience in three out of four of the careers she's written about.

Reviews

[John Gilbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was more fun than I thought it would be. 60's pulp lesbian fiction with much more of a story including teaching and coaching treatsies, murder, mystery and all around mayhem at times.

Bobbi is our hero, a famous athlete whose career ended with injury becomes a teacher/coach at a private girls school. She is a lesbian, but her journey is more than finding her perfect partner, while her starting up a new field hockey team has it's ups and downs.

PG sex is involed, but overall a fun adventure.

[Louis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Her best so far. More full of plot holes than an old hockey net, more camp than a group of boarding school girls in a tent, more filled with lame sporting metaphors than...ok that's as far as I can manage. I'm looking forward to seeing what sub-species of lesbian-pulp stereotype the author attacks next.

[Melanie Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found Bobby's confidence in her sexuality a bit of a relief compared to Lois Lenz's completely obliviousness to hers, despite making out with women every other chapter. However, Bobby struggles with teaching because she thinks she's an idiot jock, so there's plenty to explore! Read my full review at Grab the Lapels!

[kelisliveshere˚₊⋆ ʚɞ ⋆₊˚ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lighthearted and absolutely ridiculous. You cannot go into this (or any of the books in this series) with even an ounce of seriousness in your body😭.

The melodrama is always at a 10, the entire thing is innuendo after innuendo but is not as explicit as you’d think given the cover and title, and everyone is gay. What more can you want?

I will say there is a brief teacher/student portion, and I can’t say for sure the ages (idk if they were mentioned) but I gathered that it’s 22/18 or 17. This serves as a warning‼️

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

cw - student/teacher, possible suicide/murder, being gay in the early 1900s

Published in 2010, in homage to vintage lesbian pulp novels. Vintage lesbian porn but for the female gaze and the main character gets to stay gay and alive.

Bro, look at the cover! The title! How could I resist?! 

Let's get it out of the way - the title implies that there is a student/teacher situation, or that perhaps Bobby Blanchard is lecherous and gross to be watching the girls in the locker room. If it were a porn, Bobby would be helping all the girls at once to learn what sex is... Which is hot. (ahem) But I think Nolan handled that aspect really well, because it was much less raunchy.

Bobby is the kind of lesbian himbo (is there a better word?) that attracts beautiful women and is perfectly happy to please them. She's also in an odd time in her life, freshly in the world but unsure. An injury prevents her from pursuing her field hockey career, which is how she ends up as a gym teacher. She's also got a bit of ptsd from the injury and stunted psychosexual tendencies.

So yes there is a student that approaches Bobby and they do have sex, but Bobby realizes it was a bad on her part and that gets addressed. (Additionally Bobby had an affair with her own gym teacher and then comes to terms of it being not good) If a student/teacher scene had to happen, I think this was the best possible way to do it. Any other encounters are with other adults and every sexual encounter is not super detailed.

Otherwise, there was a lot of joy in this book, like casually evading police raids in gay bars and little nods that just about everyone Bobby encounters is a *homo*. There's also a lot of slang thrown in that had me cackling - golly gee! 

There is also a whole "maybe the campus is haunted due to a unclear accidental death/murder/suicide(???) that drives the boon forward, but the whole book remains light in tone and fun despite some dark matters, ie what it means to be a lesbian a century ago and the school mystery.

Homerun or, er, winning goal. Clever, fun, and just a tiny bit naughty. I hope I can track down more from this author!

[Howard Kistler · Rating 4 out of 5]

The next in the Career-Girl series, and so far the only one to take place largely away from the Magdalena Arms. But the Metamora Academy is just as interesting a setting, and perhaps one the author will return to again. Plenty of school-days literary chestnuts get cracked with wry glee, while still maintaining a story and characters you can care about. There are conspiracies and crushes aplenty to keep you entertained all the way through.

[moxieBK · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was recommended this book on the strength of the lesbian pulp fiction-like account.

It sounds like an awesome book to read, right?

Unfortunately, (maybe because it was such a dedicated rendition of a pulp fiction book,) I didn't really like this story. I found myself laughing out loud at several passages. Was this the intent? I don't know. I found it distracting and confusing for that reason.

Two stars.

[Ceris Backstrom · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok, I get it! It’s a fun, cheesy, 60’s lesbian pulp fiction style romp, and I really enjoyed that part of it. Everyone being super gay and hooking up while solving a murder? I love it! Racism and statutory rape though? Kinda ruined it. Really could have just not included those parts. :(

[Debby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great parody of lesbian pulp fiction of the 50s and 60s!

[Kelly Sutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book was so much fun I read it in two days.

[Daskleinepollo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just entertaining, but only for a while. After some pages you simply go on automatically.

[Hibiscus Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

Potential spoilers:


I initially picked up this book for the title and cover. I just had to have it, and I have to say, the book delivered so much more than I expected. I went in thinking this will be a humorous lesbian romance, but the book was packed with mystery and suspense. I was surprised to find this was actually a murder mystery.

The book was difficult to put down. The writing was deliciously satisfying and the cast of characters was fun and exciting. I was very surprised by the relationship between Bobby and Enid and towards the end Enid became such an endearing character.


The book has some spice but it's not the center of it all. I did not read the other books from the Career Girl series, but now I'm hoping I can find the rest of them to complete the trilogy. This is a book that I will always recommend to more seasoned lesbian literature readers and it's one of my favorites.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A light, fun read. I found the characters' clunky understanding and application of adolescent psychology annoying - Bobby would read one textbook and suddenly understand her students (including obvious things that she should've understood before), and all the teachers went around quoting psychology texts. I didn't realize the book would turn out to be a mystery, and that part was fun.

[Yuuto · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you want to read about field hockey and a messily thrown in mystery, I guess this is the book for you. I didn’t care for this one as much as the Dolly Dingle book.

I also absolutely hated Enid toward the end, why would you be ga-ga over a woman who sneers at your profession? Sounds like a really healthy relationship.

[Vae · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great fun, very camp, and Bobby is delightfully oblivious to pretty much everything. Light pulp entertainment, and good at that.

[Holden · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

[Professor Ratigon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Where is the best part?

[Zach Strassburger · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like cheesy lesbian fiction but this was so bad I had trouble making myself finish it. Two stars only for how campy it was.

[Macka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super fun historical read. Really enjoyed this whole series.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

While most of the action was tongue in cheek, this was a humorous and cheeky read.

[Liralen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is, though I have no idea why,* one of my favourite styles of lesbian fiction—the campy, over-the-top pulp-fiction style. I love the naïveté and the casual acceptance of queer relationships and, well, the campiness.

As a character, Bobby is a lot of fun—trying to find her professional footing; insecure about her intellect; confident in her attractiveness but less so when it comes to longer relationships. She has a sense of humour, and, while the students' adoration is a bit over the top (in a way fitting to the type of book, mind), it's obvious that she would be the sort of teacher students loved. (I was particularly amused by the bar scene where another woman wants to make eyes at Bobby and Bobby, oblivious, only wants to talk field hockey team dynamics.)

There's a great deal of bed-hopping in here, which for the most part I think works well—too much emphasis in so many books on the One True Love! That's not the case here, although there's a HFN ending. The one big thing I didn't care for about the bed-hopping and lady-lusting is that it included students. Sorry...no. Giant no, as a matter of fact. Even if the students are of age (it's not specified), Bobby is in a position of power, and...no. The Games Mistress needs to stick to people her own age and power level, please.**

As for the mystery...well, it didn't make a terrible lot of sense to me. That, plus the student-teacher affairs, is what made this a three-star book instead of four—all the atmosphere and lead up was a great ton of fun, but the end felt kind of rushed and nonsensical. Though I suppose the mystery was never really the point anyway...

* Not true. Mabel Maney is to blame.
** I realise that this is a parody of sorts and that that complicates things...but still not something I care to ignore.

[V. Briceland · Rating 3 out of 5]

To carry off a pulp fiction parody requires both a mastery of period detail and a ear for the cadences of previous decades of—let's face it—often indifferently-written genre literature. Mabel Maney managed the feat admirably in her trio of Nancy Clue trio of burlesques, which put a lesbian spin on the familiar books for girls. In her Lesbian Career Girl series, Monica Nolan attempts the same sort of seemingly effortless feat.

Bobby Blanchard: Lesbian Gym Teacher's Sapphic sexual content is little more than a few knowing smirks among various members of the all-female cast of characters, and longing glances over pre-dinner cocktails and late-night cups of cocoa. It's all about as erotic as reading a vintage Betty Crocker cookbook, but vastly more fun. Nolan's convincingly resurrects the career-girl romances of a vanished era, and even manages to cross-pollinate the genre with that of the boarding school mystery. It's all done with a conspiratorial, wink-wink nudge-nudge sense of humor and double-entendre that's nearly pitch-perfect.

The mystery itself, though, is a bit of a dud. I would've enjoyed the book as much (or even more) without it intruding every few pages on the campy good fun. I had no idea why a slightly dim instructor of peasant dance and rope-climbing, lesbian or otherwise, would have appointed herself amateur detective. Perhaps the girl investigator territory should be ceded to Mabel Maney and her Nancy Clue; Bobby Blanchard is stout-hearted and a dab hand with a field hockey stick, but no intellectual match for a crime-solving professional. The tears and trials of a career girl lesbian gym teacher would have been story enough.

[LVLMLeah · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars.

I loved Lois Lenz, Lesbian Secretary, it was hilarious. So I was excited to read this one as well. While it had a lot of the same campy snark and 50's "gay" double entendre references, it was missing something for me that Lois Lenz had.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy this book. I liked it a lot. Some of that quirky naivete was still present that I enjoyed in Lois Lenz and I liked that although representative of the 60's, practically everyone is gay and there are no judgments in the story. The only references to the actual issues of being gay during that time period or that the characters had any inkling that being a lesbian is cause for problems was that their clubs get raided and they have to hide in the basement when it happens.

I liked that there was real world reference to that but that the actual story revolved around characters acting like being a lesbian was common. No one, not even the married women attracted to Bobby, are shy about their attractions.

I know that having a lesbian story set in a girls school is another cliche, but Ms Nolan didn't even enter into using it as a titillation factor, which is often the norm. The characters are all rather naive and particularly Bobby Blanchard is such a proper, do-things-by-the-book person that she herself would have balked at that.

What keeps the story fun and interesting are several mysteries that Bobby is compelled to find answers to, and a hot bed of crushes and romances between the varied and quirky characters.

[Laura Naysmith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this one but not as much as the rest in the career girls series ( I read them out of order. it's a talent.) it still very much captures the 50/60s pulp novel style and I did love that several characters and locations from previous books popped up. Who doesn't want to visit the knock-knock lounge? I would love to.

[TJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick read. Fun book. Nothing earth shattering but nice brain candy

[Lisa Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this, but I preferred Nolan's Lois Lenz book. Probably due to the advertising setting and the fact that I know nothing of field hockey.

[amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

i didn't enjoy this as much as "lois lenz, lesbian secretary", but i still got a few chuckles from reading it.

[Nadia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Campy.

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

its just so fun.