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Christina Lauren

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Roomies Kindle Edition

by Christina Lauren (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.3 5,911 ratings

Goodreads Choice Award nominee

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From subway to Broadway to happily ever after. Modern love in all its thrill, hilarity, and uncertainty has never been so compulsively readable as in New York Times bestselling author Christina Lauren’s Roomies.

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?

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book has everything that makes romance novels great: a heroine's journey to self-discovery, a leading man worthy of a woman's love, and plenty of misty tears and full-on belly laughs along the way. Another knockout by Lauren." (Kirkus Reviews)

"Lauren’s standalone brims with authentic characters and a captivating plot." (Publishers Weekly (starred review))

“For decades, the tale of a marriage of convenience that becomes something more has inspired countless romances. With Roomies, Christina Lauren put a fresh, modern spin on the trope with their completely un-put-down-able green card romp…. Lauren masters rom-com banter and plotting, while also reminding us that the best entries in the genre are all about recognizing our own value regardless of relationship status. One of our 10 best romances of 2017. A+.” (Entertainment Weekly)

“Lauren brings her characteristic charm to the story. Holland’s tale is more than an unrequited crush; it’s about self-expectations, problematic friendships, unconventional family, and the strange power of love.” (Booklist)

"Smart, sexy, and satisfying . . . destined to become a romance classic." (Tara Sue Me on Beautiful Bastard )

“Funny, feminist, and a great example of a modern romance . . . Evie is amazing and will go down in history as one of the best heroines I’ve read.” (Smart Bitches, Trashy Books on Dating You / Hating You )

“Smart and sexy . . . Lola can’t believe that someone as wonderful as Oliver (he is rather wonderful) would ever love her, and Lauren captures her insecurities in a powerful way that will hit close to home for many.” (The Washington Post on Dark Wild Night )

“A sexy, sweet treasure of a story. I loved every word.” (Sylvia Day on Sweet Filthy Boy )

“Christina Lauren is back in top form in this light, funny, and unflinchingly honest stand-alone novel about growing up, standing up, and falling in love.” (RT Book Reviews (top pick) on Dating You / Hating You)

“Deliciously steamy.” (Entertainment Weekly on Beautiful Bastard)

About the Author

Christina Lauren is the combined pen name of longtime writing partners and best friends Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, the New York Times, USA TODAY, and #1 internationally bestselling authors of the Beautiful and Wild Seasons series, Autoboyography, Love and Other Words, Roomies, Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating, The Unhoneymooners, The Soulmate Equation, Something Wilder, and The True Love Experiment. You can find them online at ChristinaLaurenBooks.com or @ChristinaLauren on Instagram.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

one
According to family legend, I was born on the floor of a taxi.

I’m the youngest of six, and apparently Mom went from “I have a bit of a cramp, but let me finish making lunch” to “Hello, Holland Lina Bakker” in the span of about forty minutes.

It’s always the first thing I think about when I climb into a cab. I note how I have to shimmy with effort across the tacky seat, how there are millions of neglected fingerprints and unidentifiable smudges clouding the windows and Plexiglas barrier—and how the floor of a cab is a really terrible place for a baby to meet the world.

I slam the taxi door behind me to block out the howling Brooklyn wind. “Fiftieth Street station, Manhattan.”

The driver’s eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror and I can imagine what he’s thinking: You want to take a cab to the subway in Manhattan? Lady, you could take the C train all the way there for three bucks.

“Eighth Ave. and Forty-Ninth Street,” I add, ignoring the clawing flush of awareness that I am absurd. Instead of taking the cab all the way home, I’m having the driver take me from Park Slope to a subway stop in Hell’s Kitchen, roughly two blocks from my building. It’s not that I’m particularly safety minded and don’t want this cabbie to know where I live.

It’s that it’s Monday, approximately eleven thirty, and Jack will be there.

At least, he should be. Since I first saw him busking at the Fiftieth Street station nearly six months ago, he’s been there every Monday night, along with Wednesday and Thursday mornings before work, and Friday at lunchtime. Tuesday he’s gone, and I’ve never seen him there on the weekend.

Mondays are my favorite, though, because there’s an intensity in the way he crouches over his guitar, cradling it, seducing it. Music that seems to have been trapped inside all weekend long is freed, broken only by the occasional metallic tumble of pocket change dropped into the open guitar case at his feet, or the roar of an approaching train.

I don’t know what he does in the hours he’s not there. I’m also fairly certain his name isn’t Jack, but I needed to call him something other than “the busker,” and giving him a name made my obsession seem less pathetic.

Sort of.

The cabbie is quiet; he isn’t even listening to talk radio or any of the other cacophonous car-filler every New Yorker gets used to. I blink away from my phone and the Instagram feed full of books and makeup tutorials, to the mess of sleet and slush on the roads. My cocktail buzz doesn’t seem to be evaporating as quickly as I’d hoped, and by the time we pull up to the curb and I pay the fare, I still have its giddy effervescence simmering in my blood.

I’ve never come to see Jack while drunk before, and it’s either a terrible or a fantastic idea. I guess we’re about to find out which.

Hitting the bottom of the stairs, I catch him tuning his guitar and stop a few feet away, studying him. With his head bowed, and in the beam of the streetlight shooting down the stairs, his light brown hair seems almost silver.

He’s suitably scruffy for our generation, but he looks clean, so I like to think he has a nice apartment and a regular, well-paying job, and does this because he loves it. He has the type of hair I can’t resist, neat and trimmed along the sides but wild and untamed on top. It looks soft, too, shiny under the lights and the kind of hair you want to curl a fist around. I don’t know what color his eyes are because he never looks up at anyone while he plays, but I like to imagine they’re brown or dark green, a color deep enough to get lost in.

I’ve never seen him arrive or leave, because I always walk past him, drop a dollar bill in his case, and keep moving. Then, covertly from the platform, I look over—as do many of us—to where he sits on his stool near the base of the stairs, his fingers flying up and down the neck of the instrument. His left hand pulls out the notes as if it’s as simple as breathing.

Breathing. As an aspiring writer, it’s my least favorite cliché, but it’s the only one that suits. I’ve never seen someone’s fingers move like that, as if he doesn’t even have to think about it. In some ways, it seems like he gives the guitar an actual human voice.

He looks up as I drop a bill into his case, squinting at me, and gives me a quiet “Thanks very much.”

He’s never done that before—looked up when someone dropped money in his case—and I’m caught completely off guard when our eyes meet.

Green, his are green. And he doesn’t immediately look away. The hold of his gaze is mesmerizing.

So instead of saying, “Yeah,” or “Sure”—or nothing at all, like any other New Yorker would—I blurt, “Iloveyourmusicsomuch.” A string of words breathlessly said as one.

I’m gifted with the humblest flicker of a smile, and my tipsy brain nearly shorts out. He does this thing where he chews on his bottom lip for a second before saying, “Do you reckon so? Well, you’re very kind. I love to play it.”

His accent is heavily Irish, and the sound of it makes my fingers tingle.

“What’s your name?”

Three mortifying seconds pass before he answers with a surprised grin. “Calvin. And yours?”

This is a conversation. Holy shit, I’m having a conversation with the stranger I’ve had a crush on for months.

“Holland,” I say. “Like the province in the Netherlands. Everyone thinks it’s synonymous with the Netherlands, but it’s not.”

Oof.

Tonight, I’ve concluded two things about gin: it tastes like pinecones and is clearly the devil’s sauce.

Calvin smiles up at me, saying cheekily, “Holland. A province and a scholar,” before he adds something quietly under his breath that I don’t quite make out. I can’t tell if the amused light in his eyes is because I’m an entertaining idiot, or because there’s a person directly behind me doing something awesome.

Having not been on a date in what feels like a millennium, I also don’t know where a conversation should go after this, so I bolt, practically sprinting the twenty feet to the platform. When I come to a halt, I dig in my purse with the practiced urgency of a woman who is used to pretending she has something critical she must obtain immediately.

The word he whispered—lovely—registers about thirty seconds too late.

He meant my name, I’m sure. I’m not saying that in a false-modesty kind of way. My best friend, Lulu, and I agree that, objectively, we’re middle-of-the-pack women in Manhattan—which is pretty great as soon as we leave New York. But Jack—Calvin—gets ogled by every manner of man and woman passing through the station—from the Madison Avenue trustafarians slumming it on the subway to the scrappy students from Bay Ridge; honestly, he could have his pick of bed partners if he ever took the time to look up at our faces.

To confirm my theory, a quick glance in my compact mirror reveals the clownish bleed of my mascara below my eyes and a particularly ghoulish lack of color in the bottom half of my face. I reach up and attempt to smooth the tangle of brown strands that every other moment of my life are straight and lifeless, but have presently escaped the confines of my ponytail and defy gravity around my head.

Lovely, at present, I am not.

Calvin’s music returns, and it fills the quiet station in this echoing, haunting way that actually makes me feel even drunker than I thought I was. Why did I come here tonight? Why did I speak to him? Now I have to realign all these things in my brain, like his name not being Jack and his eyes having a defined color. The knowledge that he is Irish just about makes me feel crazy enough to go climb on his lap.

Ugh. Crushes are the worst, but in hindsight a crush from afar seems so much easier than this. I should stick to making up stories in my head and watching from a distance like a reasonable creeper. Now I’ve broken the fourth wall and if he’s as friendly as his eyes tell me he is, he may notice me when I drop money in his case the next time, and I will be forced to interact smoothly or run in the opposite direction. I may be middle-of-the-pack when my mouth is closed, but as soon as I start talking to men, Lulu calls me Appalland, for how appallingly unappealing I become. Obviously, she’s not wrong. And now I’m sweating under my pink wool coat, my face is melting, and I’m hit with an almost uncontrollable urge to hike my tights up to my armpits because they have slowly crept down beneath my skirt and are starting to feel like form-fitting harem pants.

I should really go for it and just shimmy them up my waist, because other than one comatose gentleman sleeping on a nearby bench, it’s just me and Calvin down here, and he’s not paying attention to me anymore.

But then the sleeping gentleman rises, zombielike, and takes one shuffling step toward me. Subway stations are awful when they’re empty like this. They’re caves for the leches, the harassers, the flashers. It isn’t that late—not even midnight on a Monday—but I’ve clearly just missed a train.

I move to my left, farther down the platform, and pull out my phone to look busy. Alas, I should know that drunk and persistent men are often not swayed by the industrious presence of an iPhone, and the zombie comes closer.

I don’t know if it’s the tiny spike of fear in my chest or a draft passing through the station, but I’m hit with the cloying, briny smell of mucus; the sour rot of spilled soda sitting for months at the bottom of a trash bin.

He lifts a hand, pointing. “You have my phone.”

Turning, I give him a wide berth as I circle back toward the stairs and Calvin. My thumb hovers over Robert’s phone number.

He follows. “You. Come here. You have my phone.”

Without bothering to look up, I say as calmly as possible, “Get the hell away from me.”

I push Robert’s name and hold the phone to my ear. It rings hollowly, one ring for every five of my pounding heartbeats.

Calvin’s music swells, aggressively now. Does he not see this person following me around the station? I have the absurd thought that it really is remarkable how deeply he gets in the zone while playing.

The man starts this shuffling, lurching run in my direction and the notes tearing out of Calvin’s guitar become a soundtrack for the lunatic chasing me down the platform. My tights keep me from running with any amount of speed or grace, but his clunky run speeds up, turns more fluid with confidence.

Through the phone, I hear the tinny sound of Robert answering. “Hey, Buttercup.”

“Holy crap, Robert. I’m at the—”

The man reaches out, his hand wrapping around the sleeve of my coat, jerking my phone away from my ear.

“Robert!”

“Holls?” Robert yells. “Honey, where are you?”

I grapple, trying to hold on because I have the sickening sense that I’m off balance. Dread sends a cold, sobering rush along my skin: the man is not helping me stay upright—he’s shoving me.

In the distance, I hear a deep shout: “Hey!”

My phone skitters along the concrete. “Holland?”

It happens so fast—and I guess things like this always happen fast; if they happened slowly I’d like to think I’d do something, anything—but one second I’m on the nubby yellow warning line, and the next I’m falling onto the tracks.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B06ZXWGSLW
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Gallery Books (December 5, 2017)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 5, 2017
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 8563 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 366 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #54,361 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #2,403 in Romantic Comedy (Kindle Store)
- #2,813 in Women's Romance Fiction
- #2,975 in Romantic Comedy (Books)

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4.3 5,911 ratings

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Christina Lauren

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Christina Lauren is the combined pen name of longtime writing partners and best friends Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, the New York Times, USA TODAY, and #1 Internationally bestselling authors of the Beautiful and Wild Seasons series, Dating You / Hating You, Autoboyography, Love and Other Words, Roomies, Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating,The Unhoneymooners, The Soulmate Equation, Something Wilder and The True Love Experiment. You can find them online at ChristinaLaurenBooks.com, @ChristinaLauren on Instagram, or @ChristinaLauren on Twitter.

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Nissa @ Of Pens and Pages

I am in love with this book!

Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2017

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There was never a dull moment reading this book! Fantastic banter and chemistry, great pace and flow, a wonderful and relatable heroine and a guitar-playing Irishman who will melt your heart with his music and accent. Plus, it’s a slow burn, marriage of convenience romance, so duh. Of course, it’s a win for me.

Holland Bakker had no idea she’d go from admiring the uber-handsome and talented busker she dubbed as Jack at the subway to actually talking to him and getting to know him, let alone marrying him, but that’s what happens. She wants to do something to help her uncle Robert, the man who gave her a job in Broadway—all backstage since she’s not as musically talented as her uncle—and when an incident happens that might leave his play hanging, she knows she’s found a way to actually do something.

Calvin McLoughlin has been staying illegally in the US since he graduated from music school, hoping he’d reach his dreams in New York. Four years later, an opportunity finally comes knocking on his door. Unfortunately, his decision to stay illegally bites him in the a** and he can’t accept the part to play in one of his favorite plays on Broadway. But then the pretty girl he kind of saved at the subway, who is coincidentally related to the man behind the play, offers to marry him, and the rest is history.

I love Calvin and Holland, both as individuals and as a couple! Holland is a twenty-five-year-old woman who hasn’t figured out how to do what she wants to do in life. She put everyone in her life first and did everything she can to help them. She did a lot of growing up in this book, and I’m so happy she did! Calvin knows what he wants from the very start and is passionate about his dreams and music. While it looks like Holland gave more to help Calvin reach his dreams, I think Calvin helped her just as much. He pushed her to step out of her comfort zone and encouraged her to pursue writing, her real passion.

I love that the whole applying for a visa thing did not go on the back burner like some marriage of convenience novels of this nature tend to do. We saw how nerve-wracking it is, saw what Holland and Calvin needed to do—the forms, the interviews, everything. And most importantly, we saw how difficult and emotionally taxing it is for the couple. Because of that, I felt more connected to them as a couple and as people.

It’s pretty light throughout the story, but there were a few angsty scenes here that made my heart ache. Fauxmances and marriages of convenience tend to become messy when lines are blurred and people involved in the arrangement aren’t sure if it’s still just a purely business deal or a gateway to happily ever after. Since Calvin and Holland are practically strangers, there are a lot of things they don’t know about each other, things they might not understand at first.

It’s not as steamy as this duo’s previous works, but it’s still filled with sexual tension and its fair share of bedroom antics, if not sweeter than the others. The feel of this book is more similar to Dating You/Hating You, the book they released before Roomies, than Beautiful Bastard, but the humor, great flow and character dynamic, and a writing style that’s entertaining and addictive is still very present.

Roomies is a sweet, fun, and romantic read that was perfect to end the year on a high note. I know there are still a few days to go before we say goodbye to 2017, but this book definitely made my year in book blogging a more fun one.

Special mention to Robert and Jeff Okai for being amazing uncles to Holland. I love their family dynamic, Holland and Robert’s especially.

Tropes: Marriage of Convenience, Celebrities—Broadway
POV: First Person, Female POV
Standalone: Yes

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M

Cutesy, Decent Read

Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2019

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I was torn on whether or not I should read this book-- I've really enjoyed a whole bunch of Christina Lauren's work but heard mixed reviews on this one. It is much more of a "romance" novel than an erotica novel (which is how I would characterise the Beautiful series, personally), but it definitely wasn't as sweet or heart-felt as Autoboyography, which became an instant favourite for me.

The story gives us Holland, an MFA graduate with a serious bit of writer's block and a lack of direction in her life, and Calvin, an Irish man who came to study at Julliard years before and overstayed his student visa by four years. She hears him busking at a subway station and becomes transfixed by his music and makes stopping by to listen to him a regular thing-- and then he happens to be there the night that she's mugged at the platform. He doesn't do anything heroic or attempt to help her (in an effort to avoid the police and revealing his status) and all of this is fresh on her mind when her uncle's Broadway show (a hit that seems to be on par with Hamilton in the story) loses its leading violinist. Holland suggests that her uncle come to hear Calvin play music and they decide to hire him on as a guitarist for the production, before they become aware of his immigration status. Spurred on by a horrible boss who makes a reckless suggestion, Holland proposes a marriage of convenience so that Calvin can work for the production and because she, as it comes out in the story, is a "supporting character in her own life" (OUCH RIGHT). Anyway, romance, misunderstandings, mutual attraction, and immigration interviews ensue.

Things I Loved:
- Holland never tried to be anything other than what she was-- a privileged girl from a good background who had hook ups with people in high places and who was just... stuck. I feel like it was honest. Other readers seemed irritated by her character, calling her immature and irritating, but I didn't perceive her that way at all. Had she been whiny and *unaware*, I would have had a serious issue, but she was self-reflective and hated herself all the more for it.
- Holland and her relationship with her uncles. fantastic.
- Okay, her uncles are both fantastic. They're great characters and I really enjoyed their presence in the narrative and felt like it balanced the main relationship well.
- When they had problems, they TALKED. It may have taken a day, but characters actually freaking talked about active problems. There was plenty of angst and tension, but not over stupidly obvious stuff.

Things I Liked:
- Calvin was alright. He was less fleshed out at some points than I would have liked, but his passion and desire to do what he loved was a very good contrast for Holland (and a good sparking point) and Holland's access to means meant that the relationship was fairly well-balanced.
- It wasn't too steamy. I am still coming around on reading more physical intimacy, so the Beautiful series was... a lot for me. But this struck a nice middle ground.

Things I Didn't Like:
- I felt like Lulu was entirely unnecessary as a character from beginning to end. I literally didn't understand the point of her at all.
- The trope of "and now the characters need to give each other several months of space to figure stuff out" at the end is a thing Christina Lauren embraces and takes to an extreme and it drives me absolutely mad.

Overall, this was a cute, super fast read-- it was a good popcorn read. I'd recommend it if you're a fan of music or theatre or the arts in general and are looking for a swift, fluffy book between more intense books. If you're big into the Beautiful series, then this isn't going to live up to your standards.

Stars: 3.5/5

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Cliente Amazon

Ojalá traduzcan más de sus libros

Reviewed in Spain on April 4, 2023

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De momento me ha gustado todos los libros que he leído de ellas ❤️

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bookworm

Such a great author pair

Reviewed in Canada on April 6, 2020

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I've only recently discovered Christina Lauren and I am devouring everything I can find. Love their writing...it makes me laugh out loud. I feel like they're the middle ground between young adult and adult-type books. It's perfect for me!

KR

Una sonrisa en todo el libro

Reviewed in Mexico on March 21, 2020

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Fue un libro divertido, lindo y directo.
Me gusto bastante y siempre me tenía sonriendo con respecto a algo. Vale la pena para pasar el rato.

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Lucia

Original. Divertido. Surpreendente.

Reviewed in Brazil on February 16, 2020

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Roomies é uma excelente leitura, que diverte e conquista o leitor desde os primeiros capitulos! Uma lovestory moderna, cheia de reviravoltas, com personagens interessantes e envolventes, em uma cidade icônica, sonho de consumo de todo jovem determinado e destemido. Calvin é talentoso e batalhador. Holland é sonhadora e romantica. A estória dos dois é comovente porque eles vão se descobrindo aos poucos e o sentimento que os unirá vai se forjar com a conivência e com o amor que ambos nutrem pela música. Recomendo o livro por seu enredo, seus personagens e seu retrato da cena cultural e teatral de Nova Iorque, uma das cidades mais fascinantes do planeta!

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nimmy

Swoon worthy, cute romance ♥️

Reviewed in India on February 8, 2021

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It's a over-all cute and romantic story. Good for a nice break from all the angst filled heart-wrenching stories where someone or other is/has died. Also, given the stressful situations, it's a perfect fit.

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