Book Review: Dirty Laundry by Heidi Cullinan

Grad student, Adam, suffers from OCD and acute anxiety attacks. When he is harrassed in the laudromat by a group of frat boys, Denver, a man the size of a house, comes to his rescue. After some flirting, the two have sex on top of Denver's laundry and begin and tentative friendship and eventual relationship.

I really liked the free short story, Dirty Laundry, so I was excited when I realized this was an expanded version of that story. Unfortunately, the extremely slow pacing, redunancy and lack of plot killed my impression of this book. I did like the way Adam's OCD was handled. Cullinan described it in a realistic and true-to-life way. However, I felt like every single page dealt with Adam's anxiety attacks, insecurities, fears, self-loathing, etc. It was neverending (which may have been the point since Adam couldn't get away from those feelings, so I guess readers had to endure them as well).

After learning all about Adams issues, we soon find out that Denver also suffers from feelings of low self esteem. He's a high school drop out, doesn't believe he's very smart and feels inadequate next to Adam's intelligence. This new development seemed like too much after all we have to see concerning Adam.

Louisa was a cool character, but she didn't seemed all that developed. She was mostly just a shoulder to cry on whenever Adam was feeling insecure or suffering from an attack. Brad, the villain of the story, was just annoying. It boggled my mind that his behavior continued as long as it did and his "comeuppance" was extremely anti-climactic. The addition of BDSM, which made me more uncomfortable than intrigued, was the final straw for me, unfortunately, and the book completely lost me. I struggled to get through this book, especially the last 30%, and found myself skimming through most of it.

Buy Dirty Laundry here or here.

~ M