The Roommate is charming, sex positive, and steamy. What happens when opposites attract? The strength of The Roommate truly lies in the characterization and chemistry between Clara and Josh. If you’ve been seeing this book everywhere, just like I have been, then keep reading this book review to see what I thought!
Summary
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.
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from Netgalley. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
What I loved most about The Roommate is how sex positive it was. It discusses not only the real de-prioritization of female pleasure in society, but also the sex work and porn industry. It was full of fantastic conversations about sex positivity, but also about the ways corporations can exploit sex workers. I don’t want to delve too deeply into the conversations The Roommate brings up, because some of them might spoil the plot, but it was absolutely one of my favorite things!
And the other element about The Roommate I loved were the characters of Josh and Clara. This dual POV can be a bit frustrating at some points, because we know exactly what the characters are thinking – just tell them! But there’s such lovable chemistry between the two of them. In this book, I could really identify with Clara who’s sort of not sure where she should go. Her organization and some of her mannerism were very me. At the same time, I appreciated Josh’s character arc so much, especially towards the end.
The Roommate is full of tension and yearning. I also love to see characters hyping each other up. In a world that seems to push us in about a thousand directions, The Roommate is about trying to carve out pieces of ourselves for our own. The ending felt a little rushed, especially considering the pace of the rest of the story, but it was a great and steamy read!
Find The Roommate on Goodreads, Amazon, Indiebound, Bookshop.org & The Book Depository.