Lonely Hearts

Love Lessons, Book 3

By: Heidi Cullinan

Narrated by: Iggy Toma

Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

Even a hot mess needs a happily ever after.

With the quiet help of his wealthy family, Sebastian "Baz" Acker has successfully kept his painful past at bay. But as the end of college draws near, his friends - his buffer zone - are preparing to move on while his own life is at a crippling standstill. With loneliness bearing down on him, Baz hooks up - then opens up - with Elijah Prince, the guy Baz took a bullet for last year. The aftershocks of their one-night stand leave giant cracks in Baz's carefully constructed armor. For the first time, the prospect isn't terrifying. Accustomed to escaping his demons by withdrawing into his imagination, Elijah isn't used to having a happy herd of friends. He's even less comfortable as the object of a notorious playboy's affections. Yet all signs seem to indicate this time happiness might be within his grasp.

When Baz's mother runs for a highly sought-after public office, the media hounds drag Baz's and Elijah's pasts into the light. In the blinding glare, Baz and Elijah face the ultimate test: discovering if they're stronger together...or apart.

Warning: contains sex in a Tesla, sex in a cupboard, sex under a piano, kinky role-play, and a cappella RuPaul songs. Just a couple of boys groping, battling, then finally loving their way to becoming men.

©2015 Samhain Publishing (P)2015 Insatiable Press

Love is worth fighting for!

There are so many emotions going on in this book I don't know where to start. My heart bled for these characters and how cruel life is for some people. Thank you Heidi for telling a wonderful story that makes me want to help others, to be a more compassionate person. I loved how you pulled the whole story together in the end. Your characters are so real I feel I know them personally. This is an amazing love I cried and laughed through. I will miss them.

Loved it

Lonely Hearts is my favorite book in this series. I love how the two broken men, Baz and Elijah come together. They both have some major baggage and neither really knows how to deal with it. Seeing these two grow and fall in love is pure magic. I loved Iggy’s narration of this series. He really brought Elijah with his snarky attitude to life!

Anger, Frustration, and Tears!!! Love it!

After reading the first 2 books. This book has me more on edge, real, relatable, and still gentle with loving situations all around. I would love to continue reading what happens to them afterwards. Great story! Tears all over the place. Baz definitely my favorite so far, the real Gay Batman!

Wonderful!

This is the second Heidi Cullinan book I've listened to and I loved it. The characters are so real and we come to know them and care about what happens to them. I laughed and I cried. Great book. I'm sure I'll listen to it again in the near future.

enjoyed it

📖 Story comment: good pace, interesting characters, complex plot.
This book is ... edgier ... than the previous two, both Baz and Elijah are complex, well developed characters, broken in their own ways and watching them learn, grow and sacrifice for their HEA was heartwarming.

🎧 Narrator comment: Iggy Toma is a good choice for this series, he suits the characters. has good cadence, inflections and intonations, it's easy to distinguish the characters from each other and he brings the book to life.

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📌 Where does it fall on my personal scale? 7
• 1 not my thing • 2 didn't like the narration • 3 didn't keep my attention • 4 was good, but once was enough • 5 enjoyed it • 6 will listen again if i'm in the mood for the narrator • 7 goes on the "re-listen" list [4⭐] • 8 kept me up past bed-time [4.5⭐] • 9 recommended to family/friends [4.75⭐] • 10 own it in multiple formats [5⭐] • 11 keep a copy with me at all times [5⭐]

Baz and Elijah

This series is beyond fantastic. I've loved each of the characters; leads, sides, bad guys, and even the most minor of them. Elijah and Baz are in a bad place separately. Each has deep wounds and walls, but together they fill each other's holes, repair the damage and find their heart. I'd love to see this series continue; Mina, Lejla, Jilly, and Brian. They need their stories told. As always, I love seeing the guys from past books and we get a treat in seeing Ed and Laurie from Dance with Me make an appearance as well. The epilogue is a wonderful treat that left me smiling the rest of the day.
BRAVO MS. CULLINAN!
Highly recommended author and series

Audiobook: Iggy Toma is a master narrator

Love and disfunction at its best!

This book was the perfect balance of crazy and sweet. Baz and Elijah are so great together, and their story was one of my favorites. Walter and Kelly from the first book will always be my favorite in this series, but Baz and Elijah are a VERY close second. Add great narration and it's close to perfection! The way Iggy Toma reads a story it makes you feel like you're part of it. He allows you to really be able to visualize everything happening which for some reason is hard to find in a narrator. Highly recommended this book, and all the others in the series!

Tough couple to tackle but still an excellent book

First, I just want to say that I really enjoyed this book. It maintained the flavor of the first two books- continued to give some dark moments while still maintaining the feel-good community love and support happily ever after tone of the series. One of my absolute favorite moments is when Baz declares that, no they are not Sid and Nancy. They are in fact, Sophie and Howl. I also was quite amused by the observation towards the end of the book by Elijah that their relationship has kind of an identity crises as they have compared themselves to so very many different cinema couples by the end. (I had to seek out Black Butler as a result of this book.)

I appreciated the addition of Lewis/Lejla and the continuing expansion of awareness/education about the multitude of lgbtq issues that people, and particularly youth are up against. It felt like there was *a lot* of stuff tackled in this one book though - maybe too much.

I think that this was an intriguing but tough couple to tackle a story about. Baz and Elijah both have some pretty unlikable characteristics as portrayed in the earlier books in this series. I get that to make them the central characters of this story they needed to be transformed into characters for us to love, however, I think that both characters were force molded rather than exposed, understood and transformed. In spite of events at the end of book 2 which undoubtedly affected the way both characters would behave in *this* book I think that Baz's aloof/mystery persona and Elijah's acidic self-reliant self-preservation were both way underplayed even at the beginning.

I liked the idea of self-medication (Great we are going to Sid and Nancy each-other.) for different reasons for both characters was a really important and great thing for this book to explore, but I found the ultimate resolution to that, as well as the underlying issue's to be unrealistic and extremely white-washed. Depression and drug abuse are both huge and important issue's that deserve more attention and reality than they were treated with.

In spite of those complaints, I was happy with the outcome of this book as I have been with all of them. It was a fun ride, and left me with the feel-good warm fuzzies I associate with this series as well as a whole cast of characters that I have fallen in love with.

really good story

love how previous characters are still heard from even though the story is not based on them.

Such a Special Series, Well Done Iggy Toma!

An absolutely lovely series, even better in audio performed by Iggy Toma. It took awhile to gear up for Baz's story, but I'm glad I finally did it.
Unique and beautifully written, a truly special series.