The American Roommate Experiment - Elena Armas

The American Roommate Experiment by Elena Armas

Genre: Realistic Fiction/Romance

Blurb (on back of book): From the author of the Goodreads Choice Award winner The Spanish Love Deception, the eagerly anticipated follow-up featuring Rosie Graham and Lucas Martín, who are forced to share a New York apartment.

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.

MY OPINION: ***

I really wanted to love this book, especially since I so thoroughly enjoyed the first one. Aaron Blackford will always have a place in my heart but I don't know if I can say the same about Lucas. This was one of the biggest let-downs for 2022 for me, and while I would not say it was BAD, it definitely did not meet the high expectations I had for it after the first one.

To clarify, this is not a sequel to The Spanish Love Deception but is a standalone using characters from the same universe. This book follows Rosie (a name I could NOT get behind, I'm sorry, that name is one of my biggest icks), Lina's best friend and coworker from the first book, and Lucas, Lina's cousin. It had all the potential to be perfect, but I just think the execution was not there.

I find that a lot of times, when authors try to capitalize off the worlds they built in their debuts by expanding the stories of side characters, it seems a little redundant and unnecessary, a sad fact I've been learning slowly as I read more romance. I know I took a long hiatus and I last read the first book over a year ago but I remember ADORING that one. In fact, I believe it's on my six-star shelf. I'm gonna be real honest and say that I remember about 3% of that book but for some reason, that one really got me. This one, on the other hand, was just not at the same level, or maybe romance is no longer my cup of tea (I literally haven't found a good one in a while and it's depressing).

Rosie has been stalking Lucas via Instagram for months before actually meeting the man in real life. While this may seem like a red flag for some people, TBH we've all done it. I am not really a fan of authors putting in pop culture references and like contemporary gadgets like social media platforms into books, but as it's gotten more popular, I've learned to accept it. Anyways, by some combination of fate and bad luck (and the rom-com gods), they end up moving into Lina's apartment together (forced proximity trope!). 

This was the slowest of slow burns and I used to be a big fan of that trope. In fact, I would have put it at top five not so long ago. But now I'm sick of it. This one took way too long for anything to happen and I was just not invested enough in the characters to care about the plot aside from the romance. I hate insta-love but this one was too slow for me. I felt like 200 pages had gone by and nothing had happened. And on top of all that, the chemistry just wasn't really... there? I wasn't feeling it between Lucas and Rosie, I'm going to be real honest. The angst and tension that a good slow-burn builds up just wasn't really prominent, at least for me.

We have GOT to get rid of the Fault-in-Our-Stars-esque "Always" thing. If you've read the book, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It was cute in 2014, but it's just cringe now. It screams millennial. And this one really got me. CRONUT YOU? CRONUT YOU??! ARE YOU BEING SERIOUS? That was when I knew this book would never hit the six-star or even five-star mark anytime soon.

I also think another reason I wasn't as big of a fan of this book was the friends-to-lovers trope. Everyone knows that's one of my least favorites and while sometimes, it's done well to the point where even I like it, this one just wasn't one of those.

I know I sound like a hater. I will say that this book was super cute and easy to read. I finished it in one sitting and while parts of it felt exhausting, I never really felt the strong urge to close the book and finish the rest the next day. It kept me engaged and while it wasn't my favorite rom-com ever, it did what it had to do. 

The cameos from Aaron weren't enough to bring this one back up to a phenomenal rating. Still, I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a quick rom-com for winter break. I'm definitely the unpopular opinion so take what I have to say for this book with a grain of salt (though really, I'm never wrong).

Main Character: Rosie, Lucas

Sidekick(s): Lina, Aaron, etc

Villain(s): Misunderstandings, etc

Realistic Fiction Elements: This book was real to life.