Book Review: Almost Like Being in Love

A high school jock and nerd fall in love senior year, only to part after an amazing summer of discovery to attend their respective colleges. They keep in touch at first, but then slowly drift apart.

Flash forward twenty years.

Travis and Craig both have great lives, careers, and loves. But something is missing …. Travis is the first to figure it out. He’s still in love with Craig, and come what may, he’s going after the boy who captured his heart, even if it means forsaking his job, making a fool of himself, and entering the great unknown. 

Told in narrative, letters, checklists, and more, this is the must-read novel for anyone who’s wondered what ever happened to that first great love.

Almost Like Being in Love

Steve Kluger

Rating: 4/5 🌈
Published: 11th May 2004
Goodreads
Rep: gay mc and li (ownvoices)

And as long as I’m being brutally candid, I only wound up teaching American History because I followed a cute ass into the country-and-western section at Barnes & Noble (…).

If you’re gay yourself, then you know there’s only one thing better and more comforting than reading a book about gay people your age (or younger) overcoming all the obstacles & getting a happy ending. And that’s reading about older gays doing exactly that. Almost Like Being in Love is a gift for a simple reason: it gives us both.

Half the fun with this book is its format. The story of Travis and Craig (Craig and Travis) is told through emails, lists, post-it notes, journal entries, court transcripts… It creates this cool atmosphere of only getting to know everyone through snapshots, like you’re spying on them through a window every now and then. But at the same time somehow makes everything more realistic and more intimate; you can feel the desperation in a character when it bleeds even into exam questions for a class he teaches.

And what a story it is!! Travis and Craig properly met – and fell in love – their senior year of high school, a few months before graduation. The boarding school they went to wasn’t far from New York City and that’s where they spent a summer together before going off to colleges. At literally opposite ends of the country. And subsequently losing touch.

Now fast forward twenty years and let Travis hear their song. Moonlight did a similar thing, with Kevin hearing a song at the diner & calling Black. So clearly wanting to reconnect with the love of your life because of a melody is gay culture.

Only Travis is a touch more dramatic than Black and his odyssey through America is truly Something™. You just can’t imagine the things he will get himself into… It’s that dramatism that makes the story hilarious but also? Incredibly relatable? I mean, lesbians move in together before dessert on the first date… Who of us has ever heard of chill.

So yes, the characters are very believable, which comes from Almost Like Being in Love being an ownvoices book. But they are all also just genuinely well written, with little quirks and prominent character traits, and life goals that are everything but clear. Kluger created amazing characters that you cannot help but want to become friends with.

Don’t let the title confuse you. It is, first and foremost, a love story. A love story that spans decades and almost brings a new meaning to romance. A love story that allows the characters to grow us people, make mistakes and make amends, that lets them fight for what they want. It takes the characters home the longest possible way & leaves the reader with such an incredible feeling of hope, of being invincible. To be honest, no review can do it justice.

Do you know Two Men in Love by The Irrepressibles? And that moment in particular where the lyrics are just “It’s who I am: I’m in love” on what seems like an endless loop? This book feels exactly like that.

I’m really happy my first review on this blog is of something I loved so much! I hope I can keep this winning streak for as long as possible! Until next time, guys!