I enjoyed the themes of self-identity and loving someone for the person they are, not for the job they have. Two polar opposites ending up together was truly fascinating to read about. It also gave a reminder that love comes when you least expect it; don't go searching far when the person for you is right beside you. Quite steamy too, which may be a little uncomfortable for some readers, but those steamy parts are what really emphasize the story. Definitely enjoyed it!!

I absolutely loved this book! Watching opposite roommates, Clara and Josh, relationship develop was absolutely wonderful. Clara really embraced her new career and felt it made me cheer her through this lifestyle change. The perfect book to read during quarantine. Thank you Berkeley Romance and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader Copy. Looking forward to the next book in the sequel.

The Roommate is an unexpected rom-com that provided laughs and some steamy sexual tension. I was impressed with Rosie Danan's debut novel.

Clara is a straight and narrow kind of girl. She likes sticking to the rules and she is the only one in her family that does. When she decides to go to LA to live with her crush, she is in for a rude awakening. Instead of living with her crush, she is now roommates with a stranger. A hot stranger named Josh. Josh is the complete opposite of Clara. He is sexy, confident, and is a porn star.

After spending more time with one another, they start to develop a unique bond. You can cut the sexual tension with a knife. I really liked how their relationship blossomed throughout the story. I wished there was more on Clara's family.

I give The Roommate 4 star. It was a good start for Rosie Danan. I really enjoyed this rom-com because it made me laugh and gave me a cute romance.

This book is very sweet and charming, if not perfect. I lost some interest toward the end but the first half of the book charmed my socks off.

This romance is about as sex-positive as it is possible to get. Inhibited, upper-class Clare’s first ever impulsive decision turns disastrous after the man she switched coasts to live with dips out on her at the last minute. She finds herself living instead with a forward-thinking adult star who brings out a side of her she never knew existed. This one is very steamy, but I wouldn’t call it unconventional, despite the leads’ fun and unique business venture.

Nope. I just didn’t see the charm of this book.

I know some books just don’t resonate with one reader while another loves it but in this case, I just don’t understand what anyone found appealing.

In The Roommate, Clara Wheaton moves from New York to Los Angeles because her unrequired love interest asks her if she wants to come out and stay in his extra bedroom. With a Masters Degree in art history, Clara walks away from an internship at a prestigious New York Museum for a man she knows doesn’t see her as anything more than a long-time friend. She accepts his offer in hopes that he will finally, after all these years, realize how perfect they are for each other because now they share a bathroom?

Clara gets to L.A. only to find Everett leaving town on a tour with his very, very non-famous band. Everett can waste time with a band that isn’t going anywhere because he and Clara are both from very old money, rich families. We will come back to this. So Clara arrives in LA with her bags in hand and receives the news that Everett is heading out of town for a few months and that he has found someone to share the house with Clara while he is gone. Someone he found on CRAIG’s LIST!! Considering that you are getting your new roommate from Craig’s list, where all good serial killers find their next victim, I can’t imagine why this story went any further. Let’s start the nit picking.

Everett has enough time to put an ad on Craig’s list and interview (did he?) potential roommates but he couldn’t pick up the phone before Clara left New York to give her an option of whether or not to come. He waits until she arrives in LA. Not only this but why? Why would Everett need to sublet his bedroom? He has money. It’s not like he is a working class guy who is leaving for a project for work and needs someone to take care of his apartment. It’s not like the house will be empty since he just invited Clara to come. Clara also has plenty of money to buy a return ticket to New York. If she sold all of her furniture and bought a ticket to L.A., I can understand why she would be forced to move into a house alone with a stranger. I know she doesn’t realize right away that Josh wasn’t a friend of Everett’s but just some guy he found, but still. Clara has an obscenely large trust fund so she can just return to New York and stay at an obscenely expensive hotel until she finds a new apartment if she doesn’t want to stay with her parents. The reason for her move has left town. She has no ties, no job and no uninterested love interest. Why stay? And if she wanted to stay in LA, why not get an obscenely expensive hotel room in L.A. where she could look for a job?

Clara also doesn’t drive since she had a bad car accident a few years ago. So, she leaves New York with all its subways and taxis and moves to L.A., where she needs to get a job, but can’t get anywhere without a car service which will cost her whole paycheck just to get to work. She has a masters degree. She has to be smart. Really? Did she think any of this through except she wanted a man who clearly had no romantic interest in her?

But Clara is determined to make a success of all her many, many mistakes and makes a list of do’s and don’ts for her and Josh, her new roommate, to abide by so they can live in harmony. Again, if everything is so well organized, how did she get herself into this mess?

Josh needed a place to stay because he was off-again with is on-again-off-again girlfriend/co-star and she tossed him out of her apartment. Josh and his co-star/girlfriend are a very popular couple in the porn industry. For a popular porn star, Josh signed a really bad contract with the leading producer of adult movies. Of course, it is too expensive to hire a decent lawyer, so finding a cheap apartment where he can crash until they are on-again makes it worthwhile for Josh to put up with all Clara’s rules, like three knocks before you can enter the bathroom. Clara and Josh are coasting along semi-ignoring each other until Clara’s aunt sees a picture of Josh and tells Clara that her roommate is a very popular porn star. Not, “Hey, he looks just like Josh Love, this porn star” or “What does your roommate do for a living?” She recognizes him instantly from one picture. Her aunt must watch a lot of porn.

Now, here’s where it went wrong for me. Okay, the whole things was a mess but here is where it goes from not great to WTF? Ms. Masters Degree goes back to the house, puts on her skimpiest PJ, because everything else was in the laundry, takes her laptop into the living room (not alone in her bedroom) and does a search for Josh Love and pulls up one of his movies. Clara’s getting all aroused by it. So much so that Josh makes it into the house and watches her watching the show and she never realizes he is there. Clara’s caught but still tries to deny it. She finally admits it was arousing and eventually confesses that she never orgasmed with a lover. Josh, on behalf of all men everywhere, offers to help her orgasm and Little Miss Manners takes him up on it. Really? She needs three knocks on the bathroom door, but all hands on her vagina is okay?? Especially since Clara doesn’t do casual sex. You know this isn’t going to end well. Asking a porn star to get you off is much worse than asking a mechanic acquaintance to check that weird noise your car makes. His JOB is to have sex with strangers. Anyone want to guess how awkward things got between them after she orgasmed and he stands back like do I get O.T.? Anyone? Anyone?

Josh is hoping to renegotiate his contract and while the bigwigs do offer his considerably more money and will allow him to take side projects, they expect him to do 52 movies the next year. I will say that again, 52 movies for them and then he can do some extras side movies. 52. Fifty…Two… Is it me? 52 movies sounds like a lifetime achievement not one year’s worth. No wonder he is the most popular. Is anyone else making porn? I guess this explains the poor quality of acting in adult films since who has time to learn lines and get into character when you have to make a minimum of one film a week. Fifty-Two!

While I will admit Josh and Clara had a few fun moments together, they were very few. There really wasn’t much of a buzz between them. The rest of the story involves Clara using her huge trust fund playing producer for Josh and his adult film star friends to make videos for a website which will help women and their lovers have better sex; their battle against the big wig producers and how Clara doesn’t want her family name associated with making even classy porn for educational purposes.

Amazingly, I did make it through to the end but I had so many issues with the plot of the story, and the characters didn’t click with me or each other.

In Rosie Danan’s The Roommate, uptight East Coast rich girl Clara Wheaton—who can fold napkins in fourteen different shapes but can’t orgasm—moves to Los Angeles to spend the summer sharing a house with a childhood friend, Everett, secretly hoping to turn her longtime crush into her happily ever after. Not only does she discover that Everett has impulsively sublet his room to a stranger so he can take off on tour with his band, but that stranger has a secret identity of his own. Josh Darling’s boy-next-door charm belies his fame as an “adult performer”—that is, a James Deen-style porn star.

Inevitably, Clara’s curiosity overcomes her natural prudishness. “No matter how hard she tried to distract herself, or how many ‘concentrate’ playlists she made, her mind kept floating back to Josh and his great big . . . occupation. Josh in a skimpy pizza delivery uniform. Josh as a sexy mailman with an extra-large package. The endless possibilities tormented her.” Soon, they’re not just roommates with benefits but business partners, as Clara bankrolls a series of sex-positive education films for women. Along the way, she discovers that, despite his unconventional career path, Josh makes a much better boyfriend than her flaky childhood crush.

Indeed, he’s almost too good to be true, instantly vanquishing Clara’s inhibitions and, with them, any real source of conflict. Instead of exploring their relationship with each other—or with their respective disapproving families—the novel focuses on fighting exploitation in the porn industry. As a result, The Roommate doesn’t quite live up to the originality of its premise, and, much like porn itself, gets numbingly repetitive fast.

The blurb and the cover had me excited to read this book. This debut author pulled me. I loved the fact that these roommates did not know each other.

Clara thinks she’s going to move in with her best friend she’s liked for a long time. Well things didn’t work out as she planned and now she’s living with a stranger.

The Roommate was an enjoyable read that had me laughing and enjoying these characters. Looking forward to more work from this author.

I originally picked this up wanting a light and fun read that I could absorb quickly. I got that and so much more! This book exceeded my expectations and in the very best of ways. The chemistry between Clara and Josh was palpable - it was romantic, funny, so steamy and made me think a lot about abuse of power and sexism. Overall a must read!

The Roommate by Rosie Danan is one of my favorite books of 2020 without a doubt. Prior to picking this up, I had been in quite a book slump but this one got me right back on my game - reading the entire novel cover to cover in one day. This sex positive, unique, steamy romance featuring Clara and Josh (forced proximity, enemies to lovers) as roommates had me laughing, loving and enjoying every single page. Oh, and did I mention the focus on the importance of women's pleasure? yeah, all the stars for that portion too!

I was thrilled to learn that Naomi, will be getting her own book next and you better believe I will be keeping my eyes peeled for that one as soon as I can!

Thank you to Berkley Romance for an advanced copy. All opinions are my own.

This story was so fun and so unique. Josh and Clara seemed to be total opposites in their lifestyle choices, but very similar in their openness to trying new things and their ability to be flexible and make a difficult situation work for them. They were both sweet and kind, yet had a lot of personal baggage to sort through. Their attraction was immediate and their responses to it were humorous and touching at the same time. Their chemistry and love scenes were very steamy, but also considerate and gentle. I loved the way they worked together to fight injustice and used their past hurts to help others. I didn't expect to get a little teary with this one, but their story touched my heart and I was sorry to see it come to an end. I'm looking forward to more books by this author!

Thank you to the publisher for a complimentary copy in exchange for my honest review.

This book is so cute! I remember reading The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang and abolutely loving it and wanting more books like that. This book gladly fulfills that need. It was so well done and explored a topic/area I had very little knowledge of. Josh was so patient and one of the great book boyfriends and I really enjoyed Clara's evolving relationship with him.

When I first heard about this book, I’m not going to lie, I added it because it’s about an adult performer. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book with one (that was classified as regular fiction anyway lol) and I knew I needed it once the reviews started coming in. And when I finally read it, I was not disappointed.

Clara has gone to her long time crush’s new residence and left all her problems with her mom (and all things that come with that) behind her. Just when she thinks she has a chance with him, he surprises her with: I rented out the room and I’m leaving instead. And lo and behold, the person he rented it out to is the exact opposite of quiet, bookworm, laminated rules Clara…. He’s an adult performer. As the summer goes on, they learn that they have more in common than they thought.

Now with the narrators, I really enjoyed them. It’s no secret that Brittany Pressley is one of my favorites. I say it every time she narrates another book. And this one is no different. She further cemented my love for this book. And the fact that there is a dual narrator made it even better. Teddy Hamilton did a great job as Josh. This wasn’t your usual book, but Hamilton made it seem like it was.

For the actual book, I LOVED the plot. I gave this almost a full rating because I thought the pacing was slightly off, but overall, it was a fun, very steamy book. And Idk, I love the opposites attract troupe; especially when there’s a nerd/bookworm involved. And as I said, this one does not disappoint.

The romance was very cute. I felt like I went through all the emotions with them. I was extremely happy, I was sad, I was excited for them, I felt it all. The only thing I didn’t like about it was the pacing. It kept going from 0 to sixty and then 0 again for long periods of time back to 60. I would have much preferred them to do it gradually, like start with a kiss or something and then kept amping it up after that. I guess it all felt weird to me to see them still acting like something as big as a SPOILER handie END SPOILER didn’t happen. But otherwise, watching the two of them be together was super cute!

This was so different than other things I’ve read, but I really enjoyed this. Now there’s a companion coming out next year, and I can already hardly stand the wait for it. I’m hoping for the same awesome writing style, same cute but steamy romance, and awesome characters that this one had in her next one.

***Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review***
I was a little turned off by some of the things in this novel and did not finish.

I had heard that The Roommate by Rosie Danan was hotter than a ghost pepper, and the people were not lying!

This book is sexy, but it isn't gratuitous. It's a book about finding oneself as much as it is about love and sexuality. The character development is on point and the banter is witty.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book. All thoughts are my own.

This book is making me want to read romance only for the rest of the month! I haven't read a good romance since August despite trying every single month to enjoy each romance I pick up. The Roommate broke my romance dry spell and I am beyond ecstatic.

I loved EVERYTHING. The characters, the plot, the tropes used in the story. But what I loved the most was the discussion of sex work and pornography - the bad and the potential of good. I also love how sex positive the story is.

Oh and the sex scenes? Steamy af!

Clara and Josh melted my heart and I can't wait to read Naomi's book! She's such an intriguing characters, I'm looking forward to understand her better.

If you're overlooking this one because the cover is kind of cheesy and lame (seriously, I only like the font), DON'T. The Roommate is a groundbreaking rom-com, one that deftly weaves through the swoon and steaminess of the story with heart and realism that bring the story back to Earth.

The Roommate follows Clara, an East Coast socialite who's uprooted her entire life to come live with her longtime, childhood crush in LA. At least, that's the plan - until he abandons her to tour with his band and leaves her with a roommate from Craigslist she's never met. Enter Josh: a decent guy who's willing to put up with Clara's angst, pining, and uptight ways. But all that comes crashing to a halt when Clara finds out that Josh is a porn star - and a famous one, at that. As the two balance lust and growing feelings on top of a plot that seeks to shed light on female pleasure during sex and empowerment within the sexist, abusive porn industry, the story churns out tons of highs (steamy scenes! banter!) while still packing a decent emotional punch (backstory! career moves! finding yourself!)

One of the things I liked most about The Roommate is how <i>real</> it feels as a reader. I can hear you wondering how feasible moving in with a famous porn star is, and yes, you're right about that. But honestly, Rosie Danan does something with her characters that I rarely experience in fiction: made them feel like real people. The way she writes about movement with her characters really grounds them; there are so many specific little movements that Clara and Josh notice each other making that I can't recall ever seeing on a page before, and especially not in rom-coms! Some of it is centered in their lust, but I really liked how motion and movement was used to define their path towards falling in love, too. Maybe the English major in me read too far into that aspect, but I just really enjoyed the way it made Clara and Josh jump off the page.

Really, Rosie's writing is fabulous. I'm a sucker for a killer opening line, which she had, and she often writes in surprising dialogue or scenes that startle a laugh out of me. Clara and Josh are imperfect, and not just in the need to get over a hurdle in their relationship or whatever. They both have weird quirks that get explained. Clara can't drive, Josh can't even look at ketchup. There's so much realness in it which made the steamier moments even more amazing (and, occasionally, mortifying from secondhand embarrassment to the max!) Their characters really work, and the progression of their relationship also really works, too. Another standout character is Naomi, Josh's ex-partner (in sex, professionally and personally) and I'm super excited to see her getting a book next year!

All in all, this was the rom-com I didn't know I needed. Don't overlook it, because it will surprise and please you at how it balances fun with reality!

This book, about a socialite who unwittingly finds herself living with an adult film entertainer, was so surprisingly sweet, funny, and fun! I almost literally could not put it down. Not only did I love the love story between Clara and Josh, more importantly I loved the way this book humanized and destigmatized sex workers and sex work. A fantastic fun read!

Thanks to NetGalley and Berkeley Publishing Group for an advanced copy of this book.

A fresh idea, very compelling and steamy. Definitely a great trope of opposites attract and not judging a book by its cover. I can see lots of readers loving this book.,

3.25 Stars / 3 Steam Fans

Sadly, The Roommate did not live up to the hype for me. Clara is a do-gooding socialite that moves across the country after a childhood crush. Well, when she arrives, her crush has rented out his room to Josh, a porn star. The Roommate started very interesting but became heavy-handed with social justice and lacking in romance. There is a steamy self-care moment, but even that fizzled out, falling to the social issues.

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