The American Roommate Experiment by Elena Armas
Published: September 6, 2022
Rosie Graham has a problem. A few, actually. She just quit her well paid job to focus on her secret career as a romance writer. She hasn’t told her family and now has terrible writer’s block. Then, the ceiling of her New York apartment literally crumbles on her. Luckily she has her best friend Lina’s spare key while she’s out of town. But Rosie doesn’t know that Lina has already lent her apartment to her cousin Lucas, who Rosie has been stalking—for lack of a better word—on Instagram for the last few months. Lucas seems intent on coming to her rescue like a Spanish knight in shining armor. Only this one strolls around the place in a towel, has a distracting grin, and an irresistible accent. Oh, and he cooks.
Lucas offers to let Rosie stay with him, at least until she can find some affordable temporary housing. And then he proposes an outrageous experiment to bring back her literary muse and meet her deadline: He’ll take her on a series of experimental dates meant to jump-start her romantic inspiration. Rosie has nothing to lose. Her silly, online crush is totally under control—but Lucas’s time in New York has an expiration date, and six weeks may not be enough, for either her or her deadline.
Rosie Graham has recently left her job as an engineer to follow a career as a romance writer. After her first book takes off as a success she got a deal for a second book, but now has writers block. After her apartment ceiling collapses she goes to her best friend’s apartment to stay a few nights while her bestie is on her honeymoon. Enter Lucas, Rosie’s best friend’s cousin, he shows up at the apartment to stay the last few weeks of his Visa allotment at his cousin’s apartment and Rosie finds opportunity to use Lucas to help her for Book #2’s inspiration.
So, I want to say I loved it, but I can’t quite get there. And I think it’s because the beginning/middle of the book dragged a bit for me. It felt like there was just a lot of unnecessary writing put in. And so it slowed down the pace a lot to a point where I was thinking OK there’s slow burn then this book took it to like a slooooooooooooow burn. It took so long to get anywhere close to the romance.
I also had a bit of a problem with the main character Rosie. She used a lot of her energy to just keep reminding herself that her feelings should be suppressed because the arrangement between her and Lucas wasn’t “real” so it was a lot of reading the same “we’re just friends” over and over again. Unfortunately, Rosie fell flat for me and actually felt really awkward reading her parts of the book. Lucas’ perspective was really good though, I almost wished more of the book was set in his perspective since to me, it was more interesting. Although his need to fight their attraction just solely based on Rosie being Lina’s best friend was…unnecessary.
There was also a random side plot with Rosie’s brother that didn’t do much of anything for the book and just wish it was either more purposeful or left out. But overall, it’s not the worst RomCom I’ve read, but definitely not the best. If you’re interested in this book I’d probably suggest reading The Spanish Love Deception by this same author rather than this book (I absolutely adore Aaron Blackford).
Rating: 3.25/5 Stars
Leave a Reply