When Gillian is caught on the wrong side of a #metoo incident, she abandons her life as a New York publicist and returns the the boarding school she attended in Sonoma Valley. Gillian gets to lick her wounds in relative privacy in her new role as a dorm mother, but being back at the school when she met her first love and experienced her first true public humiliation. Being back there is bittersweet, but when it turns out that first love Aiden still lives in the area, Gillian feels hope for a do-over. But when Gillian learns some disturbing information about the school's headmaster, and seeks out Aiden (head of the PTA - yep, his daughter is a student), he tries to put distance between them. and when two students have a song they wrote go viral, Gillian becomes a dorm mother cum publicist. ROOM AND BOARD was an engaging read, but the pacing seemed off and the novel did not build the a satisfying peak the way I hoped it would. Nonetheless, I will be eager to read Parker's next work.

I have a preference for novels written in first person POV (I think it gives a more immersive connection to our main characters) so this one just wasn't for me. Thank you for the ARC!

After life turns upside down for Gillian, she returns to her boarding school 18 years later to be the dorm mother for the year. Can she reconcile her complicated history with the school and fix her tarnished reputation?

This is a true second chance/redemption story. It is harmwarming, charming and funny. I can’t recommend this enough!

A scandal on campus turns these high school girls lives upside down, the campus is full of girls who need to be more in touch with reality. It wasn’t a good storyline and I felt like I’d rather watch gossip girl again to feel those private prep school vibes.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an early copy of this book.
As a 40-something myself, I was really looking forward to a chic-lit fun book about second chances. But the truth is, this was pure torture. I almost scrapped it at least three times. But I know the honest feedback is important.
The majority of this book focused around the loss of a job, a boarding school, a select few high school students as supporting characters, a headmaster scandal and a second chance romance.

I will start with the loss of a job. Our protagonist visited her lost career in flashbacks and present woes and moans WAY too many times throughout this book… It dragged out so poorly that made me want to slap our main character because at 38 you should know better and just MOVE ON! We know! You lost your favorite job and I don’t want to still be hearing about it in the third to last chapter!!!

In terms of the school and a few of the high school students are supporting characters, it felt very teeny-bopperish and if I wanted to hear about the drama and life around teenage kids, I would pick up a YA book. In my opinion there is too much content revolving around the kids and their lives. I get that Gillian is the dorm mother to them, but there was certainly a way that you could make this more dramatic in terms of scandal in the dorms, but everything was almost so lightweight it was unrealistic. And the twins’ rise to stardom? Give me a break!

I won’t give anything away with regards to the headmaster scandal, but we met the HM maybe for 2 seconds and then all of a sudden the story revolves around him and what he did wrong🤷🏼‍♀️
And then Gillian’s old flame romance was such a disappointment…. Like not even a match to ignite the spark! It was laughable how bad it was.
And finally, all throughout the book we hear about the traumatic break up of her best friend and roommate at her former school. Yet by the end of the book, we still never see her! An old friendship reconciling would’ve been more dramatic and interesting than reading these pages.

In the end, I would not recommend this book.

Gillian has everything she’s ever worked toward as a publicist with high-profile clients in NYC and LA. Until she doesn’t. To pick up the pieces, she moves back to her alma mater and becomes the dorm mother at an exclusive boarding school. In the process, she is able to find herself again.

This was well-written, and a good read. Not too stressful or dramatic, and spice was on the low level. I wish there had been a little *more* drama during the confrontational parts of the book…the reason I knocked off one star was because I didn’t feel like it went deep enough on an emotional level. Gillian stayed super level headed and kind of flat despite everything she was going through and dealing with. But overall, enjoyable!

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

After the destruction of her PR career, 38 year old Gillian is offered a job to return to her former boarding school as a dorm mother.

The plot for this book is so outlandish that it was hard to put down. Nothing about what happens in Room and Board is even the tiniest bit realistic. Trouble and drama seem to follow Gillian everywhere she goes. After going through such a huge public scandal, there’s no way she’d be welcomed with open arms to work at a school. It would never happen.

That aside, every piece of the storyline moved so quickly. There wasn't enough delineation between the present and her multiple flashbacks to past events. Gillian’s thoughts just bleed into each other and it becomes muddled. Her relationship with Aiden is a mess and her past traumas are basically ignored.

I really wanted to like this book. The premise sounded so intriguing but the story was just one bad decision after another. This is the first book that I have read from Miriam Parker but I will look into her other novel.

2.5 stars

This is a sweet novel, but I feel there could have been more conflicts. It was really hard to believe that Gillian would go back to Aiden at the end of the story and it was hard to believe that Gillian made a “deep friendship” with Lila so quickly. I’ve never been to a boarding school but it seemed that all the girls were so quick to love Gillian as their dorm mom with few conflicts.

A cute book that might have appeal for the YA audience. A boarding school setting with rich students is always an object of fascination and Parker provides that nicely. I liked the characters and think that a follow up book would be nice since some storylines seemed unresolved or hold more potential.

While I loved the setting and initial set up of this book, I thought that Room & Board did not live up to my expectations. A lot of the major conflicts brought up at the beginning of the book never resolve by the end. The conflict from Gillian’s high school is extremely underwhelming and had no payoff. Overall, a good quick read but not one of my favorites. 3/5.

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley.

Gillian was a hard working publicist with her own firm that was highly successful. Then her career implodes, she shutters her business and now what is next? The boarding school she graduated from in Sonoma contacts her about being a dorm mom. She takes the job so that she can reevaluate her life and decide where to go from there.

She finds herself enjoying being a "mom" to these girls and helping them navigate their year. An offer comes to continue her stay - will she or won't she?

This book seems too easy - the scenes, to me, were not too realistic. Gillian's transition went too easy and the girls embraced her with no issue.

Gilliam has a great job until she loses it. After losing her job she takes a job a dorm mom at a boarding school she attended.. She really likes the job and runs into an old boyfriend. a scandal at the school threatens everything she has worked for. really good read.

This isn't your typical romance, nor coming of age story.

It's really hard to explain what this is. I typically read Thrillers or Horror, so this was refreshing. I'm not a huge romance fan, so not being completely smothered with that genre was great.

Not everyone's future pans out the way they plan, sometimes people move away just to come back. Sometimes a business fails, you lose a job and have to move back in with your parents. Nothing is ever certain. This book highlights on that, more realistic than other novels in my opinion, so I enjoyed it.

It's more contemporary adult fiction than young adult, more so because the main character is almost 40. It's worth a read!

After Gillian finds herself in the midst of a major scandal, she leaves her life in NYC to return to her former boarding school high school to become a dorm mom. While only originally planning to stay long enough to figure out what to do with her life next, when she finds herself responsible for helping to save the school, she realizes she may have found what to do next after all.

Gillian's character is easy to sympathize with and it's easy to be on her side throughout the entire story. The love story on the other hand, I had a hard time rooting for and I didn't love how the story resolved itself.

All that said, it was a story with various unexpected twists and turns that kept me wanting to read more. If you enjoy a good boarding school/2nd chance success story, pick this one up!

I had high hopes, this sounded like an interesting story. I looked forward to reading this novel. I was a bit disappointed the storyline reads more like a YA novel. Not really my cup of tea, but it might be yours.

I’ve been sitting on this review for a few weeks. I really tried to think of the best way to describe this book in a positive way, because it’s not awful…it’s just not as good as it could be. The story set-up feels like contemporary romance. Our heroine’s life explodes and she has to go home to recover and start fresh, but oh dear- an old crush is there! *le gasp*! Instead we veer into the land of women’s lit, where although there may be some love, we tackle self worth and our heroine falls into a role of mentorship. She of course also has an opportunity to use her workplace skills from her prior life to smooth over something that happens on campus. Predictably, yes, but important-ish to character development I suppose. Ultimately, the side characters- mainly the students- drag the whole book into YA-land. It could have been balanced better considering our heroine is an adult, if not for the fact that the main drama of the book surrounds a love triangle from her high school days that she can’t get over. *Big eye roll moment *. Girl, you didn’t move on?! This trope works for some, but not me. The book felt too young for me, and thus became so frustrating that I didn’t want to finish. I did. And I wasn’t satisfied at all….and I’m a romance fan, so a story wrapped up in a pretty bow is my jam. Bummer.

2.5, rounding to 3 because despite my nitpicking, the book was still enjoyable and easy. A really good vacation or plane book.

Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for this ARC, in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

Room and Board by Miriam Parker was a fun read! It switched between the main character attending boarding school then working as a dorm mother at the same boarding school. This would be perfect to read when school starts back in the fall!

I had high hopes for this book as I flew the first 75% of it really loving the main character, Gillian. Gillian is a former publish in NYC. After a sort of vague reason, but because of some sort of scandal, she closes her business and takes a job as a dorm mom at her old high school. One of those that the rich people sent their kids away to. She wasn’t one of the rich kids, but there on a scholarship so there’s that storyline.

Like I said, I enjoyed the first part of the book. I thought they way she connected with the kids was endearing. It’s the kind of relationship that adults want with kids. We want to dole out our life advice and watch them get that enlightened look in their eyes. Doesn’t so much happen in real life but I still liked it in the book.

I also really enjoyed that Gillian was in her Mid-30’s. I don’t read a lot of books with characters in that age range and as I’m in that age range, I was glad to relate to a character on that level. Lastly, I really liked how her old world of PR came into play at her new job. A blend of the old and new is exactly what life is about.

The book missed the mark for me on the male love interest. I honestly wasn’t sure if I was supposed to hate or love Aiden, her high school crush and now adult loverrrrr. There was some scandal in high school with Aiden, Gillian, and their best friend Miranda. Although it was mentioned a few times throughout the story, I needed a solid chapter or two (or three) with flashbacks of what exactly happened and the aftermath, instead of vague references. From what it seemed like, Aiden would have needed to do more than just say “I’m sorry” a few times to make up for it.

There were other storylines that I wanted to hear more about. There was a mention about the strain on Gillian’s relationship with her mother, but I didn’t understand why and when this happened. Another MAJOR gap in the storyline was Miranda. She’s mentioned so many times and was her best fired in high school, but we never get to hear from her in present time. It seemed like a very brushed off subject, even though it was clearly important to Gillian, I would have loved a resolution. I think I would have preferred to story about two friends reconnecting as adults rather than the love story with a boy who made some seriously questionable choices as a teenager.

Again, the first 75% was really great; I had high hopes, but it didn’t quite carry that momentum to the end.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin for allowing me to review my first ever ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A PR disaster for a publicist to the stars and the ensuing publicity leave Gillian with no job, no friends, no future until she is contacted about a job being the dorm mother at her high school alma mater. Her first nine months are filled with teen joys and woes, an old flame, and PR work she excelled at but did not anticipate with her new job. A fun and creative story.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

After reading the synopsis, I was looking forward to reading this book. Although the premise held merit, it read more like a young adult novel. This one just wasn’t for me. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader’s copy of this book in exchange for an review.