Roommate

Wanted: One roommate to share a 3-bedroom house, split the rent, and ideally not be the guy I can’t stop thinking about.  

Seeking: a room to rent in town. I’m tidy, have no pets, and I will feed you homemade bread. I should probably add: Gay AF, and has no filter. It’s no wonder my new landlord is so wary of me. 

Roommate by Sarina Bowen is a gay romance novel about an out and down on his luck baker and a closeted farmboy who is not only questioning his sexuality but also his identity within his family structure.  Roderick Waites left the small Vermont town when I was eighteen because his parents couldn’t accept the fact that he was gay.  Eight years later, after a bad break-up, he is back to try to put his life together in the last place he called home.  He is a baker by trade and finds employment at a local coffee shop called the Busy Bean and it is here that he encounters Kiernan Shipley.  Kiernan remembers Roderick from high school although they weren’t friends or even in the same grade, but Roderick knows one of the secrets that Kiernan is keeping from his family and friends.

For me, Sarina Bowen is one of those authors who I wanna like more than I actually do.  Most of her books, or at least the ones I read, are pretty standard as far as contemporary romance goes.  They are light and fluffy with little to no angst and all issues and problems are resolved within a few pages, and those that cannot be resolved are stuffed underneath the floorboards never to be heard of again.  Most if not all the Sarina Bowen books I’ve read have been male male romances.  And although I do believe that a straight cisfemale can write a gay romance novel and do justice to not only the genre but to the community, I don’t ever feel like Bowen does so.  

The main characters in Roommate were really rather boring.  Individually, there really wasn’t anything about them that caught my attention.  Sure, Kiernan is from a big family and blah, blah, blah, but been there done that, and Roderick comes back home after a bad breakup and is temporarily homeless, but again yawn.  Roderick’s former relationship was barely touched upon, just like his relationship with his parents.  These things would have helped round out his character more, but instead were just side notes, and don’t even get me started on that third act that was resolved in a paragraph.  And then when they were together, again just boring.  That might have to do with the fact that we saw very little interaction with them as a couple when other people were around. 

I’m pretty sure Bowen was going for a sweet and charming love story, but instead this read as trite and overused.  And the fact that Bowen just ignored all of Kiernan’s reasons for not coming out to his family was infuriating.  There are very legitimate reasons why someone who isn’t straight doesn’t broadcast their sexuality far and wide, and the fact that Roderick goes from one breath saying I’m not going to make you come out to the next going but if you wanna be with me you have to is fucking ridiculous and made me despise his character.