Roomies by Christina Lauren Review

Title: Roomies

Author: Christina Lauren

Format: Ebooks/ Scribd
Publication Date: December 5th, 2017

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?

Holland has been going out of her way to hear a busker in a subway of New York City. She has given him a name and a whole world inside her head, but has never actually met him. Until one night, when she is a little bit drunk, she marches up to him and speaks. They share a brief moment before a homeless man tries to take her phone and pushes her onto the subway tracks and leaves her there. Expecting her busker to come to her defense when everyone assumes it was a suicide attempt, he fades into the back ground. From there, within weeks, they end up married and preforming on Broadway. How does that even happen?

Reading the description of this book you might think it is stupid. That this book is going to be eye roll worthy. In my opinion, you would be wrong. Yes, the description sounds out there, but Christina Lauren pulls everything together rather believably. A lot of the times. Come on, they get married within two weeks of knowing each other, not everything will be that believable. The characters are amazing. I am always raving that I LOVE Christina Lauren’s female characters. I don’t find that a lot in romance books because most the author’s are concerned with getting you to fall in love with the male. Which, they do that, too, but their female characters are strong and a character all their own, with or without the male character. They have a life of their own, friends they communicate with, and family they see without them. They stand on their own, which I don’t see much in this genre. I just adore that. The writing, as always, was beautiful and made this such a fast read. I read it in a few hours.

I didn’t like the character of Calvin at times. Overall he was a good character, but a bit much at times. He seemed very soft and needy. I don’t really care for that in a male or female character. So much so that it brought my opinion of the book down a star. If I knew these two people in real life, I wouldn’t put them together, just for that reason.