The Roommate by Rosie Danan
Publisher: Berkley Romance
Tropes: Forced proximity, opposites attract, roommates
Heat level: 🔥🔥🔥
# of pages: 336
My rating: 5 stars
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Buy: Amazon Canada || Amazon US || Indigo
House Rules:
Do your own dishes
Knock before entering the bathroom
Never look up your roommate online
The Wheatons are infamous among the east coast elite for their lack of impulse control, except for their daughter Clara. She’s the consummate socialite: over-achieving, well-mannered, predictable. But every Wheaton has their weakness. When Clara’s childhood crush invites her to move cross-country, the offer is too much to resist. Unfortunately, it’s also too good to be true.
After a bait-and-switch, Clara finds herself sharing a lease with a charming stranger. Josh might be a bit too perceptive—not to mention handsome—for comfort, but there’s a good chance he and Clara could have survived sharing a summer sublet if she hadn’t looked him up on the Internet...
Once she learns how Josh has made a name for himself, Clara realizes living with him might make her the Wheaton’s most scandalous story yet. His professional prowess inspires her to take tackling the stigma against female desire into her own hands. They may not agree on much, but Josh and Clara both believe women deserve better sex. What they decide to do about it will change both of their lives, and if they’re lucky, they’ll help everyone else get lucky too.
The Roommate has been so hyped over the last few months, I was honestly a bit nervous to read it. I also didn’t know what a ‘raunch-com’ was, and I didn’t read the synopsis or any reviews before starting, so I had no idea what was in store for me.
So, what was in store? A whole lot of laughs and swoons. Great characters that were easy to root for. Sexytimes that nearly set my Kindle on fire. Without a doubt, The Roommate completely lived up to the hype and is one of my favourite books of 2020 so far.
I loved Clara. She was wonderfully quirky and she made me giggle so much. She was someone I could see myself being friends with, and I wanted her to see how wonderful she was and that she deserved good things, despite feeling like her family was cursed. She’d lived a safe life doing what was expected of her and doing her best to live up to the family name. The first spontaneous, out-of-character thing she ever did was move across the country to live with her best friend - and unrequited crush - only to discover he was actually ditching her right from day one to go on tour with his band.
Enter Clara’s new roommate, Josh. Oh, Josh. He was so swoony! Total book boyfriend material. He and Clara were so different, but they had sizzling chemistry and their banter was hilarious. I loved how the way he saw Clara was so at odds with how Clara saw herself, but he slowly pulled her out of her shell and made her see that she deserved better than unrequited love and living only to please her family.
I also loved how sex-positive this book was. It shone a light on the porn industry and humanized sex workers when a lot of people are quick to dismiss and demonize the industry and all people involved. I especially appreciated the emphasis on women’s pleasure and how women deserve to enjoy sex as much as anyone else. You know how people often refer to romance in derogatory terms like ‘lady porn’? Well, this book was lady porn in all the best ways and was simultaneously a love letter to romance and also a big ‘eff you’ to everyone who talks crap about the genre and the things that bring women pleasure.
So yes, The Roommate completely lived up to the hype. I loved the characters, I loved the romance, I loved the banter, the flirting, the sexual tension, and all the emotions. The Roommate is a fun, flirty, fantastic must-read for all romance fans.
YAY, I loved this one and I read so few straight up romances these days but I was quickly invested :)
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