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. ~ Goodreads
Source: arc provided by the Berkley Publishing via Netgalley
The bookpusher: Amber from DuLivre
Review: The Roommate is the latest must-read romance. I went into without knowing much or having high expectations so I wasn’t overly disappointed that it still wasn’t THE rom-com that I so desire. (fyi - this isn’t a rom-com but is light, fun & sexy)
Even so, I found a lot to like & a few quibbles along the way.
Clara is a pampered socialite from the infamous east coast Wheaton family. She tries to be the perfect daughter and never cause a scandal that will make her mother be disappointed in her, as has befallen so many in the family, including, recently, her brother. She does need a change though and decides to strike out on her own so she heads to LA to live with her best friend Everett, her lifelong crush, and to try to make him see her in a new romantic light. At the last minute Everette bails to go on the road with his band and instead sublets his room with a renter he found on Craig’s List.
Josh is said roommate and is messy and low-key in all the ways that Clara is organized and uptight. He’s pretty great about following her (laminated) list of rules though and they make the best of an awkward situation until Clara finds out about Josh’s profession as a porn star.
I love how this book made Clara and Josh go outside their comfort zones without changing who they were at their core. Josh helps Clara push outside her sexual boundaries and reconsiders his judgement of rich socialites, while Clara sees there’s more to Josh and other workers in the industry.
There are sexy times but they both keep getting in heir own way because of Clara’s fear of causing another scandal for her parents and Josh being afraid of failing Clara as he did his parents (who he hasn’t spoken to) after getting into porn.
😍What I loved: Clara really learns to break out on her own. She makes unconventional and empowering choices in her professional life.
Josh is a good guy backed into a corner both personally and professionally. He could have made a lot of bad choices but he thought outside the box and I just really like how that all turned out - especially professionally for all involved..
Josh and Clara were adorable together. Honestly, their sex scenes fell kind of flat (& cliché) for me but I adored those little thoughtful gestures they did for each other & the long conversations they had. There’s also a great grand gesture moment.
😒The not so much: Clara and Josh have a lot of family baggage. This is a HUGE part of the story – it propels the romance and the personal conflict and wasn’t addressed enough for me. Or at all in one case.
This is kind of spoilery so I’ll tag it.
SPOILER –> Josh’s family rejection was resolved with a 30 second conversation and was all a misunderstanding after the book of him made it seem like his whole family spent a lifetime knocking him down and making him feel unworthy. I guess that wasn't the case?
And Clara’s … the entire book, from basically page 1, keeps talking about how her family HATES scandal, She’s terrified to upset her mother. She lies to her the entire book – yet the author just skips over it to the epilogue where her family loves Josh and is having a family holiday dinner with porn stars and their daughter owns a porn filming business. Yet that conversation is never shown - where she gets the courage to stand up to them, how they react, how she wins them over?
That was a big deal to me and really dragged my overall opinion down.
And I think the author really tried to have it both ways regarding sex work. She (successfully) educated the reader about sex workers but then conveniently made sure Josh never had sex on film once meeting Clara. I'm not sure how readers would have felt about that but I have read a few books that did it well. One of my favorites is the Curio series by Cara McKenna but that's more erotica <- END SPOILER
There is also a side story concerning Clara’s job with her aunt, a politician and a slimy porn company – again resolved in a way that left me wanting.
I hate dragging on a super popular book - but I also like to manage my own reader expectations and like to read multiple opinions so I know going in what to expect.
The end was a pretty big letdown for me - the driving force to a lot of these plotlines were ignored or wrapped up too quickly but I will say I'm happy to have read The Roommates. It was the light, sexy fun read I was looking for and solid on the romance front.
