I love the way I’m pretty much running through books these days. Almost like water, if I do say so myself. Why just this month alone, I’ve started on and completed six books which I can’t wait to share with you all. It doesn’t matter if a good number of these books are significantly shorter than books I would normally read. It’s progress all the same. Concerning the book I’ll be talking about today, I’ve heard a lot of good reports and it helped that I was hooked from the first page.
Released in September 2023 and about 404 pages long on paperback, this novel tell the story of Ariella. A woman with the perfect family, the perfect job, the perfect fiancé. Pretty much the perfect life. But on a beautiful day after work, she rushes home where she has been living with her boyfriend, Jasper, of four years, scribbles a line on a post it note, drops her engagement ring on the bedside table and goes to her new apartment as Caleb’s roommate.
Caleb is the opposite of Ariella in all the ways that count. First off, not a prude, he is a happy-go-lucky, playboy, panty-dropping man who goes through women with charming words like you would with scattered clothes in your wardrobe. Now Ariella with very different backgrounds and principles from him and what’s more, a heart ridden with guilt, moves into his space and he knows that he’s pretty much made a mistake. But while she’s there he makes it clear that she’s going by his rules. If fate and a stroke of Cupid has something else in store, is left for you to find out.
I’ll reiterate the fact that I was hooked from the first page and in as much as I like a good build up to the interesting bits, an opening line or page that slaps would always be a winner to me. I loved that I was sucked into this lady’s story and pretty much denied the room to live till the end of the story.
And I liked Ariella. She’s not your typical heroine and I love how Ola portrayed her because it would have been easy to detest her goody two shoes personality and find her incredibly annoying but her innocence was endearing to me. It was not forced and she wasn’t being bratty about it. Just a sheltered girl that grew up into a woman that is impeccable at her job but at the same time terrible in the social field. In essence, not street smart at all.
Roommates is the type of novel just like the others where you can pretty much guess the ending or who ends up with who. But what keeps you locked in is the journey there. So it’s a case of I know where we’re going but I want to see how we get there. And I loved how we got there, if I do say so myself. I was curious to see how the master playboy would turn monogamous and secretly hoped that the author wouldn’t make it unrealistic. Thank goodness she didn’t and we all ended up having a swell time.
About the ending, I don’t know. Was I expecting something more? Probably. Even though things were pretty much resolved, I still had this feeling of, “Is this where it ends?” And maybe it’s just me being greedy but that lack of a proper denouement almost made the entire journey seem a little bleak. Almost.
But through it all, I have no regrets whatsoever reading Roommates by Ola Tundun. I heard it’s the first book in the series. So I may just read the other two due to her dexterity in writing. Lovely book by all counts. Giving it a good 4.0/5 stars. It’s the weekend, so you can definitely relax with this one.
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