My book loving friend Irena asked me to buddy read this book with her. As always, our buddy reads are enjoyable and we have great chats about the book, the plot, the characters and plenty of non book related chats too. I am very glad we buddy read this book together as the book itself was sadly a disappointment.
Description:
Beach Read meets The Flatshare in this warmly funny and delightfully sharp debut rom-com about a down-on-her-luck young woman who turns an innocent mix-up between a dating app and a roommate app into a new chance at love.
After getting passed over for an overdue—and much needed—promotion, Sadie Green is in desperate need of three things: a stiff drink, a new place to live, and a one-night-stand. When one drink turns into one too many, Sadie mixes up a long-ignored dating app for a roommate-finding app and finds herself on the doorstep of Jack Thomas’s gorgeous Brooklyn brownstone. Too bad she’s more attracted to his impressive real estate than she is to the man himself.
Jack, still grieving the unexpected death of his parents, has learned to find comfort in video games and movie marathons instead of friends. So while he doesn’t know just what to make of the vivaciously verbose Sadie, he’s willing to offer her his spare bedroom while she gets back on her feet. And with the rent unbeatably low, Sadie can finally pursue her floristry side hustle full-time. The two are polar opposites, but as Sadie’s presence begins to turn the brownstone into a home, they both start to realize they may have just made the deal of a lifetime.
My Thoughts:
I buddy read this book with Irena, and I’m so glad that I did because that was by far the best part of this reading experience.
I went into this book, not expecting it to be completely realistic as it is a rom com, chick lit book. I think this served me well, as the plot and characters of this book were more fairy tale like than rom com.
The female lead character accidentally mixes up her dating app with her apartment share app and ends up meeting Jack who she agrees to be his new room mate. So as the two share Jack’s house, we see their relationship progress and I would have expected to see their characters develop.
Nope, Jack is the fairy tale guy that I think is intended to come across to the reader as ‘perfect’. In actual fact, I found his personality to be dull, and far to concerned with doing everything for Sadie.
Sadie (in my opinion) is selfish, inconsiderate and unlikable. Sadie is described, as having suffered emotional abuse from her father as a child and is therefore described to be under confident and hard on herself all the time. However the way she came across in the book to me was not this way at all. She constantly spoke of herself being “so hot” and she took big life risks. I found the description and the way the character spoke to be completely contradictory, so much so that while reading it Irena and I both commented that this could be triggering or dismissive of people who have been emotionally abused.
On the plus side to this book, the cover is lovely. The writing and chapters are very easy to read and they flow well. The book was a good length, didn’t seem to short or to long. Sadie has great friends and their characters seem a bit more developed and real to me. One is a teacher who doesn’t much like her job and so when she is not at work, she swears constantly. (Because she cannot do it at work). It came across to me as frustration at her lack of contentedness.
This wasn’t a memorable read for me, but saying that there have been some good reviews. If you like easy to read chick lit books with a ‘Prince Charming‘ that will completely dedicate everything he has to the girl, then you may enjoy it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a book that I will remember for any good reason.
Links:
ChocolatePages 