REVIEW |⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Roomate by Rosie Danan for release September 15

When trust-fund child Clara moves to LA in pursuit of her lifelong crush, she finds out he’s packing up and leaving on tour with his band. The last thing she expected was to find herself rooming with the Josh- a male porn star. Together, they join forces to advocate for better sex for women- challenging the porn industry.

I’m obsessed with this dual POV debut. I’m going to get right to it:

💖Danah’s writing is AMAZING. She writes with stunning prose and uses the most amazing descriptions and metaphors.

💖Both Clara and Josh have wonderfully executed character ARCs that say consistent throughout.

💖I loved the relationship between them. Josh is such a sweetheart.

💖This story brings up the stigma of the adult entertainment industry in such a smart way. It also points out the double standard between male vs female entertainers.

💖The steam was SOO well done. It was insanely hot, but not to the point of detracting from the story. Though I will say, if you like closed door romances, this won’t be for you.

Seriously, do yourself a favour and pre order this one! It’s definitely a favourite of the year 🙌🏼💗 massive thank you to Rosie Danan, Berkley, and Netgalley for access to this amazing ARC.

Friends, there is nothing like reading a debut romance and loving it.  Surprising, funny, sexy and original, The Roommate is on my shortlist of favorite books of 2020.  It’s excellent.

Clara Wheaton has loved Everett Bloom since they were small children.  Their families, part of the Connecticut east coast elite, are close friends, and their parents always hoped Clara and Everett would one day wind up married. Unfortunately, Everett has so far seemed immune to any pressure from his family - or Clara - to take the friendship to the next level.  But when Everett encourages Clara to “follow her bliss,” after completing her doctorate, and move in with him, Clara impulsively (uh oh) does.  Her bliss, if you haven’t guessed, is Everett.  Except Everett, a musician in a not very successful rock band, is following his own bliss (not Clara) - and going on a summer tour.  He picks Clara up at the airport, explains why he won’t be sticking around, tells her he’s found someone to sublet his room for the summer, and drops her curbside at his LA house.  Clara tries not to freak out and we all mentally agree Everett is a jerk.  She’s just managed to quell her panic and is exploring her new home, when a deep male voice responds to her utterance: “So this is how it feels to be well and truly fucked,”  with “I get that a lot.”

Josh Darling couldn’t believe his luck when he found this cheap summer sublet.  After his most recent break-up with on-again/off-again girlfriend Naomi, he was convinced he’d be sleeping on friends' couches all summer.  He’s surprised by his buttoned-up new roommate, but since she is clearly having a bad day, he does his best to put her at ease.  She finally introduces herself, telling him a little bit about herself and the circumstances that brought her to LA, and he shares that he works in the entertainment industry and lucked into the sub-let.  Clara is still clearly uncomfortable, so he tries to put her at ease by teasing her about her fancy degree and background.  Annoyance quickly replaces her nerves, and she breaks out a laminated list of apartment sharing rules for the summer.  Josh thinks they’re funny, Clara isn’t amused (and she’s trying desperately not to gawk at her handsome roommate), and they pass the afternoon figuring out how to live together.

Although the apartment sharing situation starts off awkwardly, Josh and Clara quickly form a tentative friendship.  That all changes after Josh encourages her to call her mother’s sister.  Aunt Joan relocated to LA after an impulsive decision led to her banishment from the family.  Joan now owns a successful PR agency, and much to Clara’s surprise, is happy to meet her.   After giving her aunt the highly condensed version of her move to LA, she casually mentions the name of her new roommate.  A name, it turns out, her aunt recognizes - Josh Darling is a porn star and minor celebrity.  Clara - predictably - freaks out.  Her disastrous move to LA is a scandal in the making, and now she can’t stop imagining Josh naked.  Later that night, after trying and failing to resist, she googles him.  Flushed with arousal and caught up in the scene, she fails to note Josh’s arrival at the apartment.  Oops.

Almost immediately after Josh catches Clara watching him perform, their conversation devolves into a discussion of Clara’s lackluster sexual history, and Josh’s prowess at giving women pleasure and orgasms... which he’s happy to demonstrate and she quickly allows.  Look, this is an only in Romancelandia plot twist, and while I thought the scene was sexy and hot, it was a tad disappointing in its predictability.  But much to my surprise, The Roommate quickly pivots in a different direction.

While Clara is trying to discover herself, find her way, and confront her fears, Josh is at a professional cross-roads.  Josh likes to fuck, and he gets paid for doing something he enjoys, and he’s quick to defend his career choice.  Unfortunately, despite his popularity, he’s locked into a contract that mostly only benefits his employer, and Black Hat Studios is now pressuring him to join their hardcore, extreme division.  Josh wants to work in the adult film industry, but can’t see a way forward... until Clara shows him a different path.  Intrigued by Josh’s insistence that female desire and pleasure matter, and determined to help him, Clara suggests he start his own production company with her financial backing.  Utilizing Josh’s skill set, and industry knowledge, the company could produce films to help women erase the stigma against female desire and empower them to pursue pleasure.  Plot twist!

The Roommate cleverly dovetails three seemingly disparate plot threads - Clara’s search for an identity; Josh’s positive experiences in a notoriously exploitive industry; and opposites/friends/roommates falling for each other - when Josh and Clara (and Naomi) partner up.  Shameless, the new company, forces Clara and Josh to spend more time together while slowly but surely cranking up the sexual tension, helping Clara find herself and Josh find purpose.  Neither believes they can have a future together, and Naomi, their third badass partner, explicitly warns Josh not to mix business and pleasure. Clara - convinced Josh belongs with someone like Naomi (smart, tough, and sexually confident) - doesn’t believe she can attract a super hot, sexy and sweet porn star.  Josh doesn’t think he’s good enough for Clara. And yet.

Clara’s characterization is much like you expect.  She’s a controlling and controlled Type A personality, who is slightly repressed and more than a little lost.  Her one attempt to detour from life’s predictable path backfired, and she’s slightly overwhelmed by the drastic changes in her life.  Less predictably, she faces her choices head on and makes the best of them.  She trusts her instincts about the business, and despite feeling like a less experienced, outsider, she gamely goes all-in.  Josh works in an industry known for exploiting women, but he contravenes our expectations at every turn.  He’s a charming, underachiever who pretends to be unaffected but is actually Extremely Soft (credit:  @rosiedanan), and Clara can’t resist him (neither can we!).  As you’d expect, the steam level is quite high for much of the novel, but it isn’t gratuitous.  The scenes that feature Clara and Josh are particularly well done, and they wonderfully illustrate the intensity of their emotions and physical connection.

Although I like almost everything about this story and its sex-positive, female empowerment message, it’s an idealized version of the porn industry.  Danan narrowly focuses our attention on the villainous Black Hat, but only fleetingly references the challenges performers face, and the often traumatic backstories of its entertainers.  This is a light hearted depiction of the porn industry, and while it works in the context of the story, I can't think it’s accurate or realistic.  I also had a hard time segueing from Josh’s hearty sexual appetite to his laser focus on Clara so quickly after they meet... but since I was highly entertained by his constant state of sexual frustration for most of the novel, I can forgive it!

The Roommate is a delightful opposites-attract romance I couldn’t put down.  Likable principals, great secondary characters, clever plotting, funny dialogue, and lots of sex... it’s one of my favorite books of 2020.

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This was a fun and steamy romance with a great sex-positive message. However, while the characters did have good chemistry together, a lot of the plot conflicts get resolved way too quickly and easily (won't say specifics for spoiler reasons) and not everything in Josh and Clara's backstories made sense to me logically. But it's pretty easy to push those things aside and just enjoy this very open-door and surprisingly sweet romance for what it is.

Overall, I did enjoy this book, but it wasn't everything I hoped it would be and I cant quite pinpoint why. I think the fact that Josh was an adult entertainer I thought the book would be a bit more steamy and it wasn't. There were a few good scenes but everything fell a little flat.

I also felt like the characters backgrounds weren't as fully developed as I would have liked and so I wasn't as invested in the story or their relationship.
I did appreciate the sex positivity throughout the book so I bumped my review up to 4 stars.

This was so much fun! The perfect steamy rom-com to read this summer. I can't wait to read more by this author.

This is was a funny, sweet, and sexy read. The main characters were polar opposites but had great chemistry. I look forward to Rosie Danan's future novels.

I loved every possible second of this book! Sex positive, feminist and gloriously unashamed. I would recommend this book to EVERYONE. It's sex ed with romance.

The Roommate is a quick, enjoyable read. Many predictable romance elements are present—that’s how we know it’s a romance, right? What sets it apart is the setting in the adult entertainment world. That was a new one to me. I learned some things about that world and the personal and professional challenges faced by the people who work in it. There is plenty of hot sex along with a pretty decent plot. The main weakness is the lack of main character development. It isn’t clear to me what personality traits attracted Josh and Clara to each other. Josh’s ex was by far the most interesting character. Even so, I’d recommend The Roommate to romance lovers who want a different setting for old familiar themes with some different social and workplace considerations brought to light.

*Thank you to Netgalley and Berkley Publishing Group for this E-Arc in exchange for an honest review*

I was sucked into this by the roommate trope. The good things about this novel: it was positively steamy, how Josh's profession was handled was done respectfully and with interesting twists, I liked the idea of a good girl and a bad boy together. However, I felt like this was missing a little bit of spark. I felt little emotional build with the characters and the witty dialogue sometimes felt forced. Definitely a solid romance but not one I'll be raving about.

This is such a fun romance. I love Clara and Josh being thrown together at random and the way their friendship blooms and then shifts to romantic love.
It’s also very funny and extreme sexy. Highly recommend

I loved this book! Charming, wildly sexy, and incredibly sexy positive. I am so excited to see what this author does next!!

What happens when a buttoned up and laminator-loving people-pleaser finds out her new roommate is NOT her longtime crush but instead is a famous sex-worker who not only is super great but also is making her feel very un-roommate like feels?

A great and horny story, that's what!

The Roommate by Rosie Danan was one of my most anticipated debuts of 2020 and I LOVED reading it. Great banter, super simmering sexual tension, characters who defied my expectations. I adored the squirmy anticipation I felt while waiting for Clara and Josh's heat to explode.

The shining moments of the romance come through when Clara and Josh are together on page and I loved that the story was told in dual 3rd person POV. Their is also a great cast of secondary characters, including Josh's ex girlfriend and coworker, who I hope gets her own story some day.

Josh enjoys his work and is proud of his work, and I was appreciative of the conversation around sex-work, although the conversation does stay firmly in the white, cis heterosexual space.

Of note, the word "crazy" is used multiple times by both Rosie (to describe her thoughts/actions) and by others TO Rosie and thinking about Rosie. For a book that handled sex work thoughtfully I'd hope a bit more care could be taken to consider the impact of using this word as a cavalier description.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced reading copy.

Having intentionally only read the bare minimum description prior to reading, the plot twist around the male love interest in The Roommate completely took me by surprise. That was a good thing. It's still a contemporary romance about good-looking twenty somethings in forced proximity, and those are pretty common, but the tension between Clara and Josh created by the differences in their backgrounds made a lot more sense here than in many comparable books.

One thing I found somewhat distracting is that at times the book is sort of arch and stylized in the way it describes Clara's elite background-- she comes from an old money family in Greenwich, attended Ivy league schools, and holds a Phd from Columbia in art history-- and her and her family's omnipresent concern about scandal. It's good to be specific and understand where the MC is coming from in terms of upbringing, but the descriptions seem to mimic the way historical romance would talk about a noblewoman's reputation circa 1805. Phds rarely have to worry about making the gossip pages these days, and Clara isn't a Kennedy, a Bush or even a Trump. If her family was meant to have that kind of prominence, the book missed the mark in making her father the mayor of Greenwich, a very famous and very wealthy but relatively small town of 60,000 people in Connecticut, rather than a senator or governor.

Slightly wonky class and reputation-related issues aside, the Roommate also does a fair job of engaging with questions about sex work and shaming. The connection between the MCs was also lovely and I was really happy to spend some time in their world. Overall, The Roommate was an entertaining, engrossing, gently funny, and very steamy read with a particularly memorable male love interest and an original setup.

This was a nice surprise, new author and I really like the writing and the concept!The story was sweet and sexy, the characters were well developed and the romance was steamy!

I find it fun, entertaining and fast paced!I just felt like I needed a little bit more of angst between the characters!

Overall, it was great, I'm looking forward to read more books from this author!

The Roommate was not what I expected but such a wonderful look into opposites attract and secrets that mean explosive romance.

What a pleasant surprise this book was! Thank you, so much to Berkley Romance and NetGalley for gifting me with this e-ARC. I loved the wit, the steam, and the unexpected trajectory of the plot. Clara and Josh were such a delight to get to know!

If you liked the scene in Love Lettering when Reid and Meg get intimate for the first time, you are going to love all of The Roommate. Comparisons to The Kiss Quotient are also valid. Sweet, sex-positive, and swoony.

May contain the best life-partnery, adulting, romantic exchange ever:
“I didn’t do it for you,” Josh said.
Clara’s shoulders sank. “Oh.”
“But I was able to do it because of you.”

Elsewhere in the book, the heroine asserts that librarians are the pillars of society, so I just might be the target audience here.

[ some complain that a couple key conversations (Clara's with her parents, Josh's with Naomi) take place off the page. Eh ┐( ˘_˘)┌ I did not care. Naomi gives her approval when she tells Josh "Kiss her, or I will." And Josh's reunion with his mom stood in for all parental interactions. (hide spoiler)]

Hard to believe this is Rosie Danan's first book. Naomi story next please? (✷‿✷)

Thanks to Berkley Publishing and NetGalley for an eARC. This is still an honest review.

Wow I loved this! It's obvious from the premise that this book will be hot and it was! But it had so much more going for it. It's a sweet love story, a smart, sex-positive friendship story and a coming of age story all in one.
And it's super hot.

The book had great consent rep, in a chill friends to lovers storyline. I didn’t particularly like the wealthy East Coast heroine. I found her uptight, and hated the way she talked about wearing black because it was “slimming.” I didn’t see enough personal growth in her, and grew bored with her.

I absolutely loved Clara and Josh. I was a little hesitant to read, because of the storyline, but it was honestly amazing. This book showcased both the struggles and the misogynistic behaviors found in the adult entertainment world. Real issues were addressed in a sensitive way, while the author also gave us an epic romance. It's just incredible!