About This Book:
When Blair accidentally becomes college roommates with her brother’s best friend, sparks fly in this hilarious rom-com from bestselling author Samantha Markum, perfect for fans of Lynn Painter and Emma Lord.
Blair might be a little type-A, but she never thought of herself as completely overbearing…that is, until her two best friends drop her from their housing arrangement a week before her pre-college summer coding program is about to start.
Blair knows if she switches to an on-campus dorm, her parents will make her give up her expensive sculpture class with her dream mentor in order to pay for it. Desperate, she agrees to be the fifth roommate to four off-campus sophomores who are also in a last-minute bind. But things get complicated when one of her new roommates turns out to be her brother’s best friend, Jamie Atwater.
Blair begs Jamie not to tell her brother about the new living arrangement. Her brother would go straight to their parents, who would definitely not approve, and all her plans would fall apart. So they strike a deal: she’ll help him finish coding the app he’s building if he promises to keep her secret.
Spending more time together shouldn’t be a problem. Sure, Jamie has a new haircut, a mysterious tattoo, and a year’s worth of earned muscle, but it’s not like Blair is noticing. After all, they’re only roommates, right?
*Review Contributed by Elisha Jachetti, Staff Reviewer*
THE ROOMMATE ARRANGEMENT by Samantha Markum is a YA Contemporary Romance in which Blair Milligan has everything planned out for her freshman year of college. She’s going to move into a super cute house with her two best friends, attend an accelerated learning program in the major her parents picked for her, and take art classes on the side. That is, until her friends blindside her with a change of plans. Instead, Blair ends up in a less-than-ideal space with four other people, including her annoying brother’s best friend, Jamie. As Blair navigates her living situation, and whether or not it’s permanent, the summer program she’s involved in becomes way more difficult than she imagined. Stuck between reality and what her parents want, Blair must decide who’s going to call the shots, not just for her future, but for her present.
The romance in this book is so good. The author does a fantastic job of writing a slow burn, complete with yearning, thick tension, and excellent banter. The story combines two really fun tropes: enemies-to-lovers and brother’s-best-friend. What I especially love is how we as readers experience Jamie exactly as Blair does. He’s mysterious, distant, and surprising, until he’s not. The other roommates also bring a lot of humor and heart to the story as well. I enjoyed the energy of the apartment with the group trips to the beach, the DnD nights, the band rehearsals, and everything else. Found family is a strong theme in the book, and Markum does an exceptional job of establishing the different personalities and evolving them into real friends for Blair.
Blair’s older friends reveal themselves to be truly terrible humans. However, they’re portrayed as changing out of the blue, and it may have helped the story to see Blair realizing they were never great. Instead, she was merely accepting the love she thought she deserved. That way, her self-worth journey would have been a bit more encompassing.
That said, THE ROOMMATE ARRANGEMENT is a wonderful coming-of-age romance, and perfect for anyone who wants a read that will take over their lives until finished.
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