Review: Roomies by Christina Lauren

Roomies by Christina Lauren
Publisher: Gallery Books
Publication Date: December 5th 2017
My rating: 5 stars.  

Marriages of convenience are so...inconvenient. For months Holland Bakker has invented excuses to descend into the subway station near her apartment, drawn to the captivating music performed by her street musician crush. Lacking the nerve to actually talk to the gorgeous stranger, fate steps in one night in the form of a drunken attacker. Calvin Mcloughlin rescues her, but quickly disappears when the police start asking questions. Using the only resource she has to pay the brilliant musician back, Holland gets Calvin an audition with her uncle, Broadway’s hottest musical director. When the tryout goes better than even Holland could have imagined, Calvin is set for a great entry into Broadway—until his reason for disappearing earlier becomes clear: he’s in the country illegally, his student visa having expired years ago. Seeing that her uncle needs Calvin as much as Calvin needs him, a wild idea takes hold of her. Impulsively, she marries the Irishman, her infatuation a secret only to him. As their relationship evolves and Calvin becomes the darling of Broadway—in the middle of the theatrics and the acting-not-acting—will Holland and Calvin to realize that they both stopped pretending a long time ago?

Where do I even start with this amazing book, Roomies was just everything I could have asked for, it really takes a lot lately for a book to have me fully absorbed, and because with this with book there was so much going on, I just wanted to drop everything that I was doing and read this book, why did life and work have to get in the way? The fake marriage/relationship trope has always been a favourite of mine, and whilst I can only count a handful of books that have really done this trope well, I’m glad to say that Roomies was one of these books. The relationship and even marriage of Calvin and Holland was super quick; they’d agreed that for Holland’s uncle their marriage would work out perfectly, Calvin needed a green card in order to work his dream job and Holland’s uncle had found the talent he had be looking for in Calvin, also the fact that Holland had a big crush on Calvin beforehand wasn’t a bad thing either. But despite just getting married for convenience, the marriage between Holland and Calvin was realistic and believable, and this is what I loved the most about it. I did have my niggling doubts along the way just like Holland did when unexpected surprises were thrown her way, but most of all because I’d fallen so hard for both characters, I so wanted their relationship to work beyond the initial year that they had both agreed upon, it was obvious to me, that beneath the façade, there were some genuine feelings involved and both could end up with something neither could have imagined. 

I absolutely adored Holland’s character, I saw myself in her in so many aspects and I think that’s one of the reasons why I felt so close to and could understand what she was going through. She was just skating through life, not really knowing what she wanted to do, she had a great support network in her uncles, who can I just say were two of my favourite characters and now Calvin too and of course I wanted her to succeed. There was just constantly so much to take in with Holland’s life, with its ups and downs and shock revelations along the way, my heart at times had a hard time dealing with everything that she had to go through, but these obstacles that Holland had to deal with really gave depth and strength to her character. Her relationship with Calvin was also a beautiful one, like I said sometimes I did have my doubts about Calvin’s character and his true intentions, but he was such a sweet guy, I loved how he went out of his way for Holland and also who can resist a guy with an Irish accent? I for one definitely can’t! 

Roomies really was such a wonderful story, I loved how I couldn’t’ stop thinking about this book for days afterwards, how Lauren gave us such fantastic and memorable characters that I had a hard time letting go, and just a story which could be heartbreaking at times, but also tinged with laughter and one of the best relationships I have come across in a long time! Seriously everyone needs to give Roomies a go!