Love Lessons by Heidi Cullinan

Love Lessons by Heidi Cullinan (Love Lessons #1)
Published: Samhain on 2013, eBook, 379 pages
Genres: Fiction, Romance, Contemporary
Add to: Goodreads

Love doesn’t come with a syllabus.
Kelly Davidson has waited what seems like forever to graduate high school and get out of his small-minded, small town. But when he arrives at Hope University, he quickly realizes finding his Prince Charming isn’t so easy. Everyone here is already out. In fact, Kelly could be the only virgin on campus.
Worst of all, he’s landed the charming, handsome, gay campus Casanova as a roommate, whose bed might as well be equipped with a revolving door.
Walter Lucas doesn’t believe in storybook love. Everyone is better off having as much fun as possible with as many people as possible…except his shy, sad little sack of a roommate is seriously screwing up his world view.
As Walter sets out to lure Kelly out of his shell, staying just friends is harder than he anticipated. He discovers love is a crash course in determination. To make the grade, he’ll have to finally show up for class…and overcome his own private fear that love was never meant to last.
Warning: This story contains lingering glances, milder than usual sexual content for this author, and a steamy dance-floor kiss. Story has no dairy or egg content, but may contain almonds.

I think this was my first New Adult book! Right? Or at least the first NA book I’ve recognized as NA since NA became a thing. College-age protagonists falling in love and causing drama and making new friends and moving away from home for the first time and presumably doing homework between making out and music club. Love Lessons! Yes!
Admittedly, at first I wasn’t convinced. Some of the plot devices used to squish the protagonists together in the beginning of the book seemed super contrived, for instance. Can colleges really force people to live on campus? (Later problem: why does nobody in this book take out in student loans, like approximately 95% of the rest of us college students?) And so on.
However, by the halfway mark I was SO INTO IT. I loved the characters, and the story, and the writing! I particularly loved how nurturing Walter is, even though he tries to hide it. I liked Kelley’s adorable family, and Kelley himself! There was humor and sadness and friendship and all kinds of good stuff.
The whole push-pull of Kelley and Walter’s relationship was deliciously dramatic and it was extremely satisfying when they got together and then proceeded to work through (some of) their issues and problems for the rest of the book. I especially liked how the pacing meant that a lot of plot got squeezed into a relatively small amount of pages; it felt like a much longer book, but in a good way.
And now I really want to reread it! Yay!
Read: September 4, 2015