This is a timely well-written book addressing the emerging dynamics of sexual hook up culture and relationships initiated via mediated platforms and the strategic nature of why people engage in hook ups. Also highlighting the changing norms of traditional gender-based relationships and addressing the emerging understanding of relational behaviors across the globe, this is a great resource for advanced students and scholars interested in romantic relationships.

- JENNIFER SAMP, Professor, Communication Studies, University of Georgia (USA)

The Current Collegiate Hookup Culture provides invaluable insights into young people and hooking-up practices across US Campuses. Covering a range of themes, including online dating, mobile dating, sugar daddies and and international students experience of dating, the book is an excellent resource that provides a thoroughly comprehensive review of the literature in the field. Furthermore, this book provides rare empirical evidence of what actually happens when ‘hooking up’. As a result, a number of the findings challenge conventional understandings, thus enabling new ways to think about and understand hooking up and dating. This book, with its clearly written chapters and easy to understand summaries, is a must-read for students, researchers, academics, policymakers and anyone interested in an up-to-date understanding of hook-up culture and dating more generally!

- CHRIS HAYWOOD, Reader in Critical Masculinity Studies, Newcastle University (UNITED KINGDOM)

Aditi Paul has written an important book on hook-up culture that confirms, challenges, and expands our current understanding of the sexual attitudes and practices of college students. The book is notable for its consistent focus on LGBTQ students and an important focus on international students that will create paths for new research.

- ​JASON PIERCESON, Professor, Political Science, University of Illinois Springfield (USA)

Dr. Paul’s book offers an impressively engaging, accessible, and broad review of extant and original research findings on a wide array of questions about hookup relationships. Researchers, teachers, and health providers who work with US college student populations and have interest in understanding the topography of short-term sexual relationships among young adults will find this book to be an essential addition to their collection.
 
- ​STEPHEN YOSHIMURA, Professor, Communication Studies, University of Montana (USA)

Aditi Pauls' study of "hookup culture" transcends mainstream academic critiques of dating behaviors and practices among college students. Grounded in a nationally representative sample of college students, this study is one of the most thoughtful, if not provocative, studies of "hookup culture." Paul illuminates uncharted areas of analysis that problematizes past assumptions and research findings on hookup culture. Moreover, this excellent text avoids moralistic pitfalls that characterize similar texts while also pointing out potential problems derived from this practice. A must read for anyone teaching in higher education.

- ​CHRISTOPHER CONNER, Author, The Gayborhood: From Sexual Liberation to Cosmopolitan Spectacle (USA)

In The Current College Hookup Culture, scholar Aditi Paul enters the 15 year long conversations that's been going on about hooking up to not only add to it, but to update it. From Tinder to sugaring Paul's research shows how dating apps are changing the nature of college sex and hookups as well as student attitudes about them, and perhaps most importantly, takes another look at the topic of sexual assault within this same landscape. This is essential reading for scholars and students interested in the contemporary conversation about sex on campus and all that goes with it.

​- DONNA FREITAS, Author, Consent on Campus: A Manifesto and Sex and The Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance and Religion on America's College Campuses ​(USA)

Sexual desire, attraction, and activity are as ancient as humanity itself. However, the ways in which people meet and sexually engage with desirable partners are continually changing. In this captivating study by Aditi Paul, the casual sex interaction or “hookup” is explored in depth. Focusing on a population of university students, Dr Paul investigates such things as the demographic, psychology, and the positive and negative outcomes of hookups, and even what happens during a hookup. Fascinating and unexpected results await the reader, results that call long-held views of gender and sexuality into question. Dr Paul’s valuable study is crucial reading for anyone who wants to understand the nature of casual sex
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- ​JAMES GILES, Professor & Author, Sexual Attraction: The Psychology of Allure (DENMARK)

Aditi Paul’s excellent book elegantly nestles her timely research into the larger narrative of previous empirical inquiry into hookup culture on college campuses in the United States. An engaging and important read for anyone in higher education, the book provides a broad examination of hookups that considers safety, health consequences, social/psychological risks and benefits, and the ways in which hookup culture has fundamentally changed gender dynamics. Additionally, Dr. Paul’s book gives important consideration to domains not typically examined, including sugaring, the hookup experiences of international and LGBTQIA+ students, and perspectives on equity and race. Although written from an academic perspective, the book is highly engaging, full of surprising insights, and includes direct quotes from students, making it a compelling read for anyone who wants to better understand the sexual culture thriving on college campuses. 

-​WILSON KENNEY, Clinical Psychologist & Author, Problematic Sexual Behavior in Schools (USA)

Paul provides a detailed, thorough, and valuable account of contemporary college hookup culture that challenges several assumptions about sexual cultures and app usage. This book will be of interest to anyone who wants to better understand hookup culture, and will be an asset to gender, sexuality, and communication researchers.

- ​CHRYSTIE MYKETIAK, Principle Lecturer & Author, Online Sex Talk and the Social World: Mediated Desire (United Kingdom) 

Aditi Paul’s book, The Current Collegiate Hookup Culture: Dating Apps, Hookup Scripts, and Sexual Outcomes, is a much-needed study. It provides rare insights on the role that apps, religion, race, nationality, Greek life, social fraternities and sororities, parties, alcohol, sugar daddies and mommas, and other key determinants play in the development of hookup culture in American college campuses. The book reflects the agency of various student groups whose contribution to the hookup narratives Paul examines with honesty, lucidity, and deference.

- ​BABACAR M'BAYE, Chair & Professor, English, Kent State University (USA)

Even inside the dynamic dating app scene, there are changes and shifts worth noting, and Aditi Paul does exactly that in this book. Danger, emotions, fake identities, “sugaring,” and evolving scripts—it’s all in here. Among other trends, she documents how women’s online dating behavior is becoming more similar to men’s, and how religion doesn’t matter as much as some have believed. She breaks new ground, even while most of the central conclusions of previous studies here are reinforced. Her book is a solid contribution to the literature on modern relationship dynamics and development. 
 
- ​MARK REGNERUS, Professor & Author, Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy (USA)

In this book, Aditi Paul provides us with a thoughtful and carefully argued account of hookup cultures in US college campuses. The book takes us across online dating apps alongside conventional meetings contexts to establish how these different sexual sites offer different possibilities for the expression of gender and sexuality. The book offers a welcome emphasis on sugar dating and casual sex while expanding and ‘challenging the generalisability’ of  US hookup cultures in relation to the experience of international students. This compelling book demonstrates the changing nature of hookup cultures in contemporary times, the challenges to gender norms while keeping a firm lens on the enduring patterns of inequalities within relationship dynamics.
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-DEEVIA BHANA, Professor & Author, Gender, Sexuality and Violence in South African Educational Spaces, (SOUTH AFRICA)

Dr. Paul provides a much-needed modernization of our understanding of hookup culture on campuses.  The book explores both the social context of hooking up, motivations for doing so, and the psychological impact of hooking up on young adults.  In particular, Dr. Paul’s research on the role of dating apps for racial minority and sexual minority students illustrates how these technologies connect people who might otherwise feel isolated, providing benefits as well as risks. 

- ​RICHARD SPROTT, Developmental Psychologist, 2021-2022 President of the Society for the Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, American Psychological Association (USA)

This scholarly treatise sheds light on college students’ hook-up culture by examining common “scripts” focusing on four prevalent hook-up relationships, and the implications and results associated with each.   By dispelling some common myths and providing new data, Paul explores the hook-up culture by recognizing gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, Greek life, sugar dating and international students. The book is rich in discussing the myriad dynamics in student sexual hook-ups. It is a must read for those interested in enhancing their knowledge and understanding of the hook-up culture on college campuses.
 
- SUSAN STRAUSS, Sexual harassment consultant (USA)

A remarkable book that provides a nuanced view of US hook up culture. With her exploratory research Aditi describes new trends in hook-up culture and aims to debunk several often-held assumptions. The book provides a thought-provoking update on what it means to engage in hook-ups and pays attention to previously overlooked issues and populations, such as sugar dating and the perceptions of international students.
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- ​JORIS VAN OUYSTEL, Assistant Professor, Communication, Arizona State University (USA)

Dating apps have emerged as a significant subfield in media and communication studies. But what will happen when online hookups and youth culture converge? Aditi Paul offers a lucid and eye-opening analysis of dating app use in American colleges. It sheds light on emerging issues such as digital intimacy, sexual assault, and sugar dating. A well-appreciated addition to the scholarship of dating app studies

- ​SHUAISHUAI WANG, Lecturer, New Media and Digital Culture, University of
Amsterdam (Netherlands)

Digital apps have become a vital part of the ecology of dating and hookups. But we are still learning how young people navigate the interplay between digital and material spaces in the search for intimacy. Aditi Paul’s engaging book offers an exciting advancement in our understanding. Paul’s study examines hookup culture in American college campuses, providing a holistic picture that delves into the various physical and emotional outcomes of hookups in diverse meeting contexts, from dating apps to parties, school and work. Using a nationally representative sample, and applying sexual script theory, Paul is attentive to the varying experiences wrought by gender, sexuality, race, religion and educational aspirations. As well as sexual behaviours and satisfaction, she tackles the serious terrain of sexual assaults, explores the practice of sugaring, and discusses the overlooked population of international students. Paul’s book will be a must-read for those interested in how dating apps are changing sex and intimacy.

- ​ANDREW GORMAN-MURRAY, Professor, Geography, Western Sydney University (Australia)

Through fresh empirical insights, this book offers a “system update” to people’s outmoded assumptions about contemporary American collegiate hookup culture. Its innovativeness lies in the intersectional rendering it offers of this culture’s ever-evolving imaginaries and practices that, crucially, include the increasing centrality of dating apps and other mobile media platforms.

- ​JASON VINCENT CABAŃES, Associate Professor, Communication Studies, De La Salle University-Manila (Philippines)

This book delivers an exciting contribution to the growing field at the intersection of intimacy and new media studies. In addition to challenging the stereotype of collegiate hookup culture, the study offers a fine-grained analysis of the role of dating apps in initiating casual sexual encounters without commitment. Paul shows that the issues of the contemporary hookup culture in American college campuses cannot be adequately understood without examining the complex intersections of ethnic and gender diversity, sexual agency, and online technology.

- ​WILASINEE PANANAKHONSAB, Author, Love and Intimacy in Online Cross-Cultural Relationships (Thailand)

The Current Collegiate Hookup Culture makes substantial contributions to relational communication research, sexuality studies, public health, and psychological understandings of the current hookup culture in U.S. colleges. Throughout, Paul identifies the socio-demographic and psychological correlates, meeting contexts, scripts, and outcomes of college student hookups. Paul also focuses on significant and often-neglected hookup experiences, such as sugar dating and those of international students. This book is an essential addition to the hookup literature and gets my highest possible recommendation.

- ​YACHAO LI, Assistant Professor & Author, Navigating Remarkable Communication Experiences of Sexual Minorities (USA)

Dr. Paul has given us a careful and fascinating study of the collegiate hookup culture with great insights into the historical roots of casual sexual encounters.

- MARYANN KARINCH, Author, Mature Sexual Intimacy (USA)