Roomies is another story based on one of my favourite tropes; fake dating. Our main character Holland Bakker works on the set of her uncle's Broadway play selling merch and taking photographs. Three times a week she makes the needless commute out to a subway station to hear her favourite busker play. When a member of the play's orchestra quits Holland feels that this busker could be the key to saving the show. We then learn that the busker-Calvin-is in the country illegally. In order to get him a greencard Holland offers to marry him and they have to put on a show in order to make it through the immigration interview. Inevitability Holland develops real feelings for Calvin and in true rom-com fashion, things go askew.
This book is exactly what the authors say it is in the acknowledgments, "Pure shameless fun." It won't be winning any prestigious awards but it is the perfect way to wiggle your way out of a reading slump and enjoy yourself. This book doesn't try to impress you with prose or useless big new words in every sentence. This book loves itself and doesn't really need you to love it.
If you read and enjoyed To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han and are a little older, or if you've just watched the movie and are reeling a bit, this is the perfect book for you. The same fake dating concept just for an older demographic.
I loved how realistic and relatable Holland's narrative was even though the things she said never really matched the way she thought. However there are some scenes where it is a little choppy or abrupt and I wonder if that's simply an outcome of there being two authors or if it was poor editing. Calvin's character is pretty one dimensional, he's a musical Irish sex god and that's about all there is to him really. He gives into Holland during arguments too easily and doesn't have a voice of his own. Anytime the couple argues it was mostly patched up simply by having sex. Reading this book felt like watching a movie, the way the arc progressed and the way Holland saw life made it so that I could easily see the story adapted for film. I said there wouldn't be any spoilers in this review and that holds true but here's a little tidbit of exactly how stereotypically movie rom com it is; when Holland has an epiphany that she needs to learn to love herself she starts writing more and goes for daily runs. I just watched Set it Up on netflix not too long ago so it feels especially overdone right now but what can you really expect?
All of that to say I really enjoyed reading this novel. It's nothing groundbreaking but I think that's exactly makes it so enjoyable.
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