Title: The Spare Room
Author: Laura Starkey
Publisher: Embla Books
Genre: Romance
Pages: 336
My Rating: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤
Buy this book on Amazon
The Spare Room
Rosie comes home early and finds her boyfriend on the couch when she spots his bags packed. She saw it never coming, but James dumped her after a relationship of ten years. He even announces that he can’t help paying rent for their apartment, which means Rosie has to find a roommate very fast because she can’t afford the rent on her own. Aled, the upstairs neighbor, needs somewhere to stay while his place is being renovated. It is a win-win situation. Rosie is done with men and never saw herself living with another man so fast, but slowly she starts enjoying his company.
Review
The first part of this book, it’s about Rosie’s life and how everything gets worse for her. First, she gets dumped by James, then she quits her job and she is afraid she won’t be able to pay her rent. But the second part of this book is about Rosie rebuilding her life and going after what she wants.
I liked this book, maybe a little inspirational. But that might be subjective. But Rosie had everything, then she loses everything, realizes what she really wants, and then goes after it. The reason why I didn’t give it 4 or 5 hearts is because even though I liked the slow-burn love story in this book, I think I prefer a faster-paced love story.
The slow-burn love story was pretty great. I think this was probably the first time I was actually enjoying a slow-burn love story. I liked the tension between the two characters and how slowly it developed. They become closer and closer and Alex started to open himself up. He is super shy. And I think I was definitely rooting for them. I think Aled was perfect for Rosie because he was standing up for her and he was actually helping her with cooking, cleaning, and all that. James, the ex-boyfriend, never helped Rosie. So he was stupid.
I also liked that in this book the woman makes it up to the man. Most of the time, it is the man who screws up and has to ask for forgiveness with a grand gesture obviously. So it was refreshing to read about a woman going after the man and apologizing. A bonus point for that!
This was another book that was so easy to read. I saw on GoodReads that a lot of people are leaving a review of how boring or too cheesy this was, but I don’t agree. It was an enjoyable read for me. I’ve read better books, that is another reason why I did not give this 4 or 5 hearts. But if you like a slow-burn romance and forced proximity, then this book might be for you.