From the publisher:
A LibraryReads Pick
House Rules:
Do your own dishes
Knock before entering the bathroom
Never look up your roommate online
The Wheatons are infamous among the east coast elite for their lack of impulse control, except for their daughter Clara. She’s the consummate socialite: over-achieving, well-mannered, predictable. But every Wheaton has their weakness. When Clara’s childhood crush invites her to move cross-country, the offer is too tempting to resist. Unfortunately, it’s also too good to be true.
After a bait-and-switch, Clara finds herself sharing a lease with a charming stranger. Josh might be a bit too perceptive—not to mention handsome—for comfort, but there’s a good chance he and Clara could have survived sharing a summer sublet if she hadn’t looked him up on the Internet…
Once she learns how Josh has made a name for himself, Clara realizes living with him might make her the Wheaton’s most scandalous story yet. His professional prowess inspires her to take tackling the stigma against female desire into her own hands. They may not agree on much, but Josh and Clara both believe women deserve better sex. What they decide to do about it will change both of their lives, and if they’re lucky, they’ll help everyone else get lucky too.
This was a first for me. I don’t recall ever reading a romance where the protagonist is a porn star. Male escorts show up now and again but that is an entirely different kettle of fish. You don’t get to look them up online and watch them perform. But that’s what happens to Clara after she throws caution to the wind and moves cross-country to share an apartment with the guy she’s had a crush on forever.
But when she gets there, he tells her he’s hitting the road for a while and has sublet his room to another guy. All she knows is his name is Josh and he is really cute. Clara is disappointed but too ashamed to crawl back home so she decides to make the best of it. Fairly quickly she finds out he works in the porn industry and is a star. And when they find they can no longer resist the sexual tension, everything changes.
Josh, who has always viewed sex as a job, is not sure what to do about his feelings. He’s just not used to having any. Clara is also facing a dilemma. Her family is known for their shocking scandals, but she’s always been the good girl of the family. Until now – this one will top them all.
Can a socialite and a porn star form a meaningful relationship? Of course they can, but not without a lot of angst and laughter along the way. I also appreciated the glimpse into the sex worker industry, the inherent problems with that field of work, and how some performers manage it.
This book will not be for everyone, but if you like terrific characters, an interesting storyline, real conflict, a strong feminist agenda, and well-written sex scenes as much as I do, then you won’t want to miss it. I highly recommend this debut novel, and can’t wait for Danan’s next book, The Intimacy Experiment, which comes out in the spring.
11/2020 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
THE ROOMMATE by Rosie Danan. Berkley (September 15, 2020). ISBN 978-0593101605. 336 pages.
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