This book is heavily marketed as a romance, and that was the worst part of this book... I didn't feel the connection whatsoever, and Jasper was kind of the worst.

While that did not work for me, I always love a boarding school story. Thanks, Zoey 101. Charlie's story was cute and relatively light -- there is good representation and depth with him keeping his identity a secret and learning how to open up. I did find the sexual innuendos to feel a little weird, as the story and voice felt very young to me. This isn't one that I would jump to recommend to anyone, but it was fine.

This book is certainly interesting! I adore how the story centers around Charlie who is trans and is trying to learn the norms and typical behaviors of his new boarding school setting. I did, however, feel a bit put off by how exceedingly quirky and obnoxious Jasper was. It isn't necessarily believable to have such a quirky character be popular in this stuffy setting, and the dichotomy between his strangeness and Charlie's relatable struggle was noticeable. I did enjoy the general story arcs and plotline but overall would have preferred a more realistic love interest.

The latter half of this book saves the first half, and it could've been about a hundred pages longer to give more development to Charlie (who is our POV and somehow feels lacking) as well as to what happened between our potential romantic hero Jasper, and his former friend P.M. that shapes how Jasper interacts with Charlie. And honestly maybe a little more about wth happened between Charlie and Jasper in the first place?

Conceptually, I love this, and some of the side characters were absolutely perfect, but in terms of the main plot...this was missing a lot.

It's worth it for Blaze, Robby, Xavier, Luis, and Delilah. These people who help shape Charlie's world and open him up to relying on other people, the value of friendship and being a friend, and give him a reason to do things outside of his educational goals. Charlie has done a lot of work on accepting himself, but this book reminds him to show himself love too. Charlie accepted he needed to change to be happier, but didn't know what happiness looked like.

Jasper is...excessively obnoxious. As he and Charlie mesh together more, he becomes more tolerable, and eventually adorable. I think Jasper is a complicated and very, very oblivious young man who is aware of his emotions but not always the best at expressing them, or understanding how he makes other people feel.

Seriously I wanted to love this, and I think this author has huge potential for telling beautiful stories. I wanted more developed main characters, but I appreciate the whimsy, humor, dedication to love, and dedication to transformation that is in these pages.

Roses are red, violets are blue, I can’t believe I have to live with you! Charlie is a new student at the elite St.Valentine’s Academy, arriving on scholarship, everything is going great until he finds out his single room request was denied and his pre-transition summer camp fling, Jasper, is now his roommate. The stressors of academic success, a conservative school, and navigating gender identity add further complications to this second-chance romcom. The breezy characterization will make it easy for readers to put themselves into Charlie’s shoes, though the slow burn of this romance may lose some along the way. Powars fleshes out the student body with an interesting and LGBTQ-friendly cast of characters, but only gives readers a small chance to get know them. A supplemental read for YA LGBTQ+ Romance fans.

Thank you to Netgalley and Roaring Brook Press for the ARC!

This is a delightful little book. The fantastical setting fairly sparkles off the page and I enjoyed reading Charlie’s POV.
It brought me back to the struggles of high school. I do wish there was a Jasper POV because I think it would have been fun to get his perspective.

Rating: 3.75 rounded up

This was a super sweet read and I think the relationship is really cute! I also think the cover is adorable!!!

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC ❤️🥰

This story is so cute and special and important 💞.

Charlie V.H. is heading to a prestigious and competitive academy and he is nervous. As a trans teen boy AND an Excellence Scholar who has to stay in the Top 5 to keep his scholarship, there is a LOT riding on his shoulders. And of course, he got stuck having a roommate who just so happens to be the Jasper Grimes, the asshole who led him on during summer camp two years ago.

But as the term goes on, Charlie's entire world is changed and it feels so special to get to witness his story ❤️

Charlie is finally ready to face the world aka school again after getting comfortable as a boy. When faced with an all boys academy that requires a top 5 spot to keep the scholarship and a roommate, things get challenging quick. Jasper, the roommate, is number 1, an aspiring poet, running a rule breaking romance letter service and Charlie’s first kiss from before transitioning. Charlie is trying to avoid Jasper as much as possible to hide their past, but Jasper keeps finding ways to force them together. Will Charlie get caught? Will Jasper figure out their shared past? You will just have to read the book to find out. I did enjoy this one, it was a fun time.

This was not for me. I am 32, and this is most certainly written for a younger audience. I did not finish and stopped around the 10% marker. I will not review publicly because I truly think this book is not written for my demographic, and that is not the fault of the writer,

While I didn't fall easily into this book from the very start, I did fall in love with it by the end. There characters are layered, quirky and lovable. The friendships are full of green flags and healthy growth. The story, despite over the top shenanigans and misunderstandings, felt genuine and nostalgically relatable in all its emotional dramas. I'm such a fan.

queer YA set in a boarding school?? poetry and love letters?? forced proximity because roommates?? transgender mc??? this was so so fun!! i started this on a long flight and ended up reading half in one go. Got home and finished the other half immediately. It was so good, I loved all the characters, it was such a bingeable fun read!! Need to read everything else by the author!

A book just as cute as its cover! And They Were Roommates is a YA romance about a trans teen starting at an elite boarding school, only to discover that instead of the single room he paid for he's rooming with the boy who broke his heart a few years earlier. I really appreciated the exploration of how intense academic environments and pressure (internal or external) to perform very highly can be really hard on teens. The trans and bi representation were also great.

This book was such a fun ride and I enjoyed just about every second of it. It was a low stakes YA romance with a twist and it was such a fun ride. I will be reading other books by this author.

3.5 stars rounded up.

I had really high hopes for this book from the premise alone, and it just ended up being a solidly "okay" read for me. This might genuinely be a case of Page Powars' writing not being my style, because I know I have students who will absolutely adore this book.

Charlie has worked extremely hard to be chosen as Valentine Academy for Boys excellence scholar, which allows him a full scholarship to the prestigious school. He has a plan: keep his identity as a trans boy a secret in such a traditional setting, stay under the radar, and keep his grades high enough to maintain his scholarship. Too bad that all goes to hell immediately when his request for a single room falls through and he's forced to room with Jasper Grimes: poet, playboy, and the guy who broke Charlie's heart at camp before his transition. If Charlie wants to get his single room, he'll have to help Jasper write a series of love letters for the academy's male students to be sent to the sister academy - before Jasper figures out who he is.

This is cute and goofy and a lot of fun. Charlie is a delightful lead character: he's a mess, self-centered, and trying so hard to fit in with his male classmates at all costs. He has to learn throughout the course of the story how to actually interact with others, let go of his insecurities, and open up to his friends. Even the romance between Charlie and Jasper is a fun premise: Jasper falling in love with his male roommate for reasons he doesn't quite understand, followed by the inevitable reveal.
Sadly, though, what didn't work quite as well was Jasper himself. I honestly just found him obnoxious and shallow for a majority of the story, and he never really managed to win me over. Even that would have been more than tolerable, if it weren't for the most annoying secondary character: twelve-year-old Blaze, who was precocious and over-the-top and threw off the tone of any scene he was in. What could have been funny scenes were just... off when you have a preteen shrieking about the arachnid war and the forces of darkness.

So, overall, this was fun and cute and a perfectly fine romance read! I'll be happy to have it on my shelf for my students.

3.5

This book doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but its concept and execution kept me engaged. The premise is fun, and I appreciated the themes it hinted at, particularly the contrast between privilege (nepotism and connections) and hard work or talent. These deeper ideas are present but never fully explored. The characters acknowledge them just enough to signal their existence, then move on without delving deeper.

The friend side characters throughout the book were by far the most interesting and often more so than the main characters themselves. As for Charlie and Jasper, I enjoyed their dynamic, but they both felt a little flat. Their supposed passion for their creative disciplines of literature and poetry didn’t quite ring true, which made it harder to fully invest in their journeys.

The plot also leans heavily on Charlie’s obsession with rankings, which ended up taking space that could’ve been used to deepen character development and relationships. I would’ve loved more moments of emotional growth or introspective reflection between the characters.

Overall, it's an easy and entertaining read with solid potential, but it left me wishing for a bit more depth.

I devoured this book! It features the sweetest found family and I wanted to hug all of the characters. It is light academia with queer joy and intellectual geniuses who are idiots when it comes to love and I could not have asked for more from it.

The last thing that Charlie could have possibly imagined when he entered the Valentine Academy for Boys was getting a roommate. Little did he know that it would be the worst person on the face of the planet, Jasper Grimes; popular poet, lead of the class and the boy that broke Charlie’s heart before he transitioned. Now with his entire high school career on the line, Charlie must navigate being the top of his class, hiding the fact that he’s trans, and a roommate that just doesn’t know when to leave him alone.

“And They Were Roommates” by Page Powars was a fun read that was very well written. The characters were delightful and well thought out. The plot was your typical medium stakes high school drama but there were so many great layers to the story, it held my attention. I didn’t want to put it down! I would highly recommend this story to anyone who wants an easy read with moments where you can’t help but giggle and kick your feet.

This was adorable and hilarious! I really enjoyed Page Powars' previous book, and when I saw the cover and title and blurb for this one I was hooked. Then I started reading and it was even better than I expected.

When the blurb calls it "unputdownable," they really mean it! I actually started this audiobook to listen to "for a few minutes before bed" after finishing up another book at 9:30pm which is just a little too awkwardly early for my 10pm bedtime. I fully intended to stop reading at 10, or maybe 10:30. And then it was 1:3oam and the book was over. (I sped up the narration to 2.5x because the narrator was speaking too slow for my taste.)

The characters were so good! I loved Charlie, a fish-out-of-water trans boy at an all-boys boarding school, trying to get his feet under him. He felt so real and warm and awkward, and I really felt his fear of being kicked out of school if someone found out he was trans.

Valentine Academy is intense! There's a weekly posted grade ranking, he's taking all advanced courses, he feels like everyone is so much smarter than him... It really works to keep him feeling isolated and out of place for the first part of the book. The school actually reminded me *a lot* of Caltech. I went there as an undergrad and I remember feeling a lot of what Charlie feels here. There's not only the intense academic atmosphere and the feeling that literally everyone you meet is smarter than you, but the same variety of quirky (sometimes *very* quirky) characters as I remember finding at Caltech. I actually ended up feeling an awful lot of nostalgia while reading.

The zany cast of characters at STRIP (the top 5 ranked students) end up slowly befriending Charlie and pulling him out of his shell. I loved watching his bravery grow throughout the book as he realizes he's not as alone as he first thinks.

Not least of those is his roommate, Jasper. Who was Charlie's crush at summer camp before he transitioned. Who doesn't seem to recognize him. Cue drama.

I loved Jasper. Who wouldn't? He's even more quirky than the others and seems determined to befriend Charlie. And there are so many OMG he's definitely going to recognize me now! moments. There is so much tension that builds between them before the secret comes out (and a few more besides).

The entire love letter plot was unhinged, but in a good way. It was exactly the sort of madcap fun I can imagine the students at Caltech getting up to if the school were gender segregated.

The audiobook was very well done. It was too slow for my taste, but then most audiobooks are too slow for my taste. I think I just listen fast? In any case, the narrator did a great job bringing all the quirky characters and unhinged plot situations to life and it was so much fun to listen to. I mean, I listened to the entire thing in one sitting. When I should have been sleeping.

I loved everything about this book and I will absolutely be eagerly anticipating the author's next book.

*Thanks to Roaring Book Press and Macmillan Young Listeners for providing an early copy for review.

A really great read! Page beautifully captures the messiness of high schools while creating a heartfelt romance. I was really impressed with just how real and relatable Charlie's struggles as a transgender student felt. I was cheering him on even when he was making things harder on himself. I also really appreciate the whole cast of characters included. This was a book as much about friendship as romance. Each character was unique and fleshed out and I enjoyed getting to see all their interactions with Charlie. I hope one day we get something from Blaze's POV because he was hilarious. Page created a wonderful world within Valentine Academy filled with absurdities and real life issues. It's great to see trans stories be written with such care while still allowing for the messiness and joy of adolescence.

And They Were Roommates was such a fun and heartfelt read! It gave me exactly what I was expecting, in the best way. Jasper was a bit frustrating at times, but honestly, that’s something I’ve come to expect in YA romances. He did grow on me by the end, though. Charlie, on the other hand, was an instant favorite. I laughed a lot while reading about these two and I'm so glad I got to read this early, I do think they could have been written a little older and the story would have been better but it still was good.

Page Powers handled second chance with a really nice balance. The romance is definitely important, but it never overshadows Charlie’s personal journey, which I loved. Watching him explore his identity and find his place in the world gave the story a lot of depth.

There are some serious themes throughout, but it’s also full of warmth and overall a good read.