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grandpas_farts's review
3.0
It was an enjoyable well written novella and it had great potential but I was not all too into it. I liked how in just 90 pages we got to know the characters.
Chloe is an assistant to a big adversing company. She puts an add on Craig's List and the newspaper to try and find a new roommate and ends up meeting a very colorful bunch. No one seems right except for a guy, but does she really want to live with a guy? Patrick is trying to make it as a big actor. He looked into the apartment so that he is closer to tryouts when need be. He loves the apartment, loves the location for calls, and loves the fact that his roommate is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.
The two try to make their living arrangement platonic but it's really hard when they are both attracted to each other and both a little drunk.
Chloe is an assistant to a big adversing company. She puts an add on Craig's List and the newspaper to try and find a new roommate and ends up meeting a very colorful bunch. No one seems right except for a guy, but does she really want to live with a guy? Patrick is trying to make it as a big actor. He looked into the apartment so that he is closer to tryouts when need be. He loves the apartment, loves the location for calls, and loves the fact that his roommate is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.
The two try to make their living arrangement platonic but it's really hard when they are both attracted to each other and both a little drunk.
Spoiler
What caused me not to give this book 4 stars or buy the next book right away is how the author portrayed Myra. Myra is Chloe's best friend who is natural, hates all white people and just seemed to be such a displeasure to know. Sayings like "having a nappy head don't make you black" was... interesting. I understand the uneducated cousin thinking naturally coiled hair will be "nappy" but it was an insult to read. TO ME I felt as if the author portrayed Myra to be this rude, white hater, snobbish, fist up for the sista girl all because she had natural hair. I have heard too many negative stereotypes of people with natural hair it sickens me, Myra is typically that ignorant view of women with natural hair. What I find funny is that EVERY woman I have met with natural hair (which is a lot, college girls are embracing what grows out their hair untouched, but not everyone is the same) does not care how you wear your hair as long as you love it. I rarely hear them bashing women with perms, weaves, colored hair and whatnot. I hear more permed women bashing those wearing what God gave them more. Go figure.tita_noir's review
5.0
Decided to re-read this entire series to see if it holds up. It does! I really does. I remember when I first read this I loved the "cartoon" illustrated cover and thought they were so refreshingly different. Now they are the norm.
****ORIGINAL 2013 review*****
This is a story being produced every few weeks in the serialized fashion. Initially I was going to wait and review the entire six installments together in order to review the entire story. However I decided to review the first part separately because of the 3 parts of the story I have read so far (all are really good, BTW) this first one sets the stage perfectly and as such makes the biggest impact.
As a rule, I am firmly against this sort of serialized installment release. When it comes to books, I want to be able to set my own reading pace. If it is good, i want to be be able to sit and read it until I have no choice but to stop or until I finish it. Also, I HATE cliffhangers like whoa! The multi-voulme story arc that is the hallmark structure of the fantasy genre aside, I just really do not want to wait to find out what happens next.
But these installments are currently free to borrow in Kindle I reasoned, there was no risk to me to at least try the first one. If I hated it, I could simply return it and ignore the rest. If I liked it then ...we'll see.
Sigh. Not only did I like it...I loved it.
Chloe Brooks needs to find a roommate stat. Her roommate left for LA to try her hand at a soap opera job and Chloe can't cover her part of the rent. And if Chloe can't find a roommate herself, her landlord will find one for her. So she advertises and after a depressing group of prospects she settles, almost reluctantly on Patrick Murphy.
Patrick is an aspiring actor who needs to live in Manhattan to be able to go on auditions at a moment's notice. Right now he lives with his large, close-knit Irish family on Long Island. The apartment would be a boon to not only his acting career, but it is close to his regular job as a fitness trainer and he'll be close to his younger sister who is attending school at NYU.
Patrick and Chloe navigate the strange new world of being roommates. I think the author hits all the right notes with how they at first lightly, awkwardly, navigate around each other. Chloe has to learn how to accept a new person in what had been her personal space and Patrick has to settle in and try to make himself comfortable in what is now his home. There is the added fact that both are very attractive and subliminally recognizes the attractiveness of the other.
The two mains both get a POV so you get to know them and their thoughts and the author manages to give them both a strong POV. It helps that they are both appealing and instantly recognizeable. Like people you would know IRL rather than romance novel characters.
However the strength for me in the book is how the author manages in approx. 93 pages to not only create to vivid main characters, but to also position them like a pair of suns being orbited (ha! There is a minor character named Orbit) by a group of equally vivid supporting characters.
Patrick's big family and his two best friends Paul and Max make up his satellite system. The author very deftly sets up Patrick's external conflict. His sister might be falling into the wrong crowd at school and his family is worried. He and his best friend Paul are keep a rather major secret form their other friend Max.
Chloe's group consists of her cheating ex boyfriend Lawrence, her cousin Crystal a single mother, her mother a retired NYPD detective and her best friend Myra.
While the writing is wonderful and the dialogue is funny and sharp and both Chloe and Patrick have some spot on, witty and wry observations, I think the main thing that stands out to me is how sharply the author draws her characters. Not only the mains and the supporting but also the minor walk-ons. With a few well placed sentences we get a pretty decent picture of who they are. Basically, this book does what it supposed to do in the first act. It introduces us to the players and sets up the conflict.
But it is her use of Myra and Paul that stands out for me in this installment in particular. She uses them to explore issues of race and sexuality. Not so much Paul in this installment, his comes later. But Myra is a great character. And by that I don't mean she's a wonderful person, but a good "character" to hang some issue on.
Myra and Chloe both come from a predominantly black community in Brooklyn. While Chloe has easily assumed the mein of the upwardly mobile professional having gone to college, gotten a marketing degree and works with a major Marketing firm Myra is holding firmly onto her hood roots. Myra will often deride Chloe for being "bourgie" or sounding or "acting white" even though whenever the two women are together socially Chloe easily code-switches back into the speech patterns of their background.
In Myra the author has (deliberately, imo) created the nightmare stereotype of the angry black woman who sees everything through the lens of race. She is highly suspicious of white people and ascribes any perceptions of slight she sees as racism. Through this however, Myra is able to make some pointed observations that hold a kernel of truth. However she is presented as somewhat problematic and Chloe, with a lot of frustration, inwardly acknowledges the problematic space that Myra inhabits:
"Heaven forbid I have a civil conversation with a white person at work or, even worse, have one with a smile of my face; Myra would label me a race traitor on the spot. To most people at work I am sure I came off more approachable. Myra, on the other hand, had a "back da hell up, whitey" air about her. She seemed to relish portraying the angry black woman, but I had no idea why she was always so damned mad."
Chloe herself isn't so inured to race as she has misgivings about rooming with Patrick, not just because he is male but also because he is white. And even though she works in and lives in Manhattan, her social circle is exclusively black. And while Chloe and Myra are presented as sharply contrasting characters, Crystal is also presented as yet another face of black womanhood. She is a single mother who is helping to manage the family's restaurant (A beloved Harlem institution which sounds very much like Sylvia's) whose attitudes and outlook much mirror Chloe's and yet manages to escape the 'bourgie' label.
The book works on a lot of levels. It creates a compelling story, it is well written and as an IR romance it doesn't dwell on race but uses it rather realistically,imo, given these two people. It also feels energetic with being centered in the City and it's inclusion of all types of people.
And it ends on a hell of a cliffhanger.
So yeah it did exactly what an intro book is supposed to do. It set me up, it sucked me in and it has lured me to buy the rest.
Highly recommended.
****ORIGINAL 2013 review*****
This is a story being produced every few weeks in the serialized fashion. Initially I was going to wait and review the entire six installments together in order to review the entire story. However I decided to review the first part separately because of the 3 parts of the story I have read so far (all are really good, BTW) this first one sets the stage perfectly and as such makes the biggest impact.
As a rule, I am firmly against this sort of serialized installment release. When it comes to books, I want to be able to set my own reading pace. If it is good, i want to be be able to sit and read it until I have no choice but to stop or until I finish it. Also, I HATE cliffhangers like whoa! The multi-voulme story arc that is the hallmark structure of the fantasy genre aside, I just really do not want to wait to find out what happens next.
But these installments are currently free to borrow in Kindle I reasoned, there was no risk to me to at least try the first one. If I hated it, I could simply return it and ignore the rest. If I liked it then ...we'll see.
Sigh. Not only did I like it...I loved it.
Chloe Brooks needs to find a roommate stat. Her roommate left for LA to try her hand at a soap opera job and Chloe can't cover her part of the rent. And if Chloe can't find a roommate herself, her landlord will find one for her. So she advertises and after a depressing group of prospects she settles, almost reluctantly on Patrick Murphy.
Patrick is an aspiring actor who needs to live in Manhattan to be able to go on auditions at a moment's notice. Right now he lives with his large, close-knit Irish family on Long Island. The apartment would be a boon to not only his acting career, but it is close to his regular job as a fitness trainer and he'll be close to his younger sister who is attending school at NYU.
Patrick and Chloe navigate the strange new world of being roommates. I think the author hits all the right notes with how they at first lightly, awkwardly, navigate around each other. Chloe has to learn how to accept a new person in what had been her personal space and Patrick has to settle in and try to make himself comfortable in what is now his home. There is the added fact that both are very attractive and subliminally recognizes the attractiveness of the other.
The two mains both get a POV so you get to know them and their thoughts and the author manages to give them both a strong POV. It helps that they are both appealing and instantly recognizeable. Like people you would know IRL rather than romance novel characters.
However the strength for me in the book is how the author manages in approx. 93 pages to not only create to vivid main characters, but to also position them like a pair of suns being orbited (ha! There is a minor character named Orbit) by a group of equally vivid supporting characters.
Patrick's big family and his two best friends Paul and Max make up his satellite system. The author very deftly sets up Patrick's external conflict. His sister might be falling into the wrong crowd at school and his family is worried. He and his best friend Paul are keep a rather major secret form their other friend Max.
Chloe's group consists of her cheating ex boyfriend Lawrence, her cousin Crystal a single mother, her mother a retired NYPD detective and her best friend Myra.
While the writing is wonderful and the dialogue is funny and sharp and both Chloe and Patrick have some spot on, witty and wry observations, I think the main thing that stands out to me is how sharply the author draws her characters. Not only the mains and the supporting but also the minor walk-ons. With a few well placed sentences we get a pretty decent picture of who they are. Basically, this book does what it supposed to do in the first act. It introduces us to the players and sets up the conflict.
But it is her use of Myra and Paul that stands out for me in this installment in particular. She uses them to explore issues of race and sexuality. Not so much Paul in this installment, his comes later. But Myra is a great character. And by that I don't mean she's a wonderful person, but a good "character" to hang some issue on.
Myra and Chloe both come from a predominantly black community in Brooklyn. While Chloe has easily assumed the mein of the upwardly mobile professional having gone to college, gotten a marketing degree and works with a major Marketing firm Myra is holding firmly onto her hood roots. Myra will often deride Chloe for being "bourgie" or sounding or "acting white" even though whenever the two women are together socially Chloe easily code-switches back into the speech patterns of their background.
In Myra the author has (deliberately, imo) created the nightmare stereotype of the angry black woman who sees everything through the lens of race. She is highly suspicious of white people and ascribes any perceptions of slight she sees as racism. Through this however, Myra is able to make some pointed observations that hold a kernel of truth. However she is presented as somewhat problematic and Chloe, with a lot of frustration, inwardly acknowledges the problematic space that Myra inhabits:
"Heaven forbid I have a civil conversation with a white person at work or, even worse, have one with a smile of my face; Myra would label me a race traitor on the spot. To most people at work I am sure I came off more approachable. Myra, on the other hand, had a "back da hell up, whitey" air about her. She seemed to relish portraying the angry black woman, but I had no idea why she was always so damned mad."
Chloe herself isn't so inured to race as she has misgivings about rooming with Patrick, not just because he is male but also because he is white. And even though she works in and lives in Manhattan, her social circle is exclusively black. And while Chloe and Myra are presented as sharply contrasting characters, Crystal is also presented as yet another face of black womanhood. She is a single mother who is helping to manage the family's restaurant (A beloved Harlem institution which sounds very much like Sylvia's) whose attitudes and outlook much mirror Chloe's and yet manages to escape the 'bourgie' label.
The book works on a lot of levels. It creates a compelling story, it is well written and as an IR romance it doesn't dwell on race but uses it rather realistically,imo, given these two people. It also feels energetic with being centered in the City and it's inclusion of all types of people.
And it ends on a hell of a cliffhanger.
So yeah it did exactly what an intro book is supposed to do. It set me up, it sucked me in and it has lured me to buy the rest.
Highly recommended.
bookhoarder76's review
3.0
Ehhh wasn't bad wasn't wonderful I thought as soon as it was getting good it ended. Glad it was a freebie will only read the others if they are too.
anitalouise's review
5.0
Wonderful start to a series. Quick, cute - great characters. Author was able to give them some depth in less than 100 pages! Looking forward to reading the remaining books in the series. Can't wait to find out what happens with Patrick and Chloe!
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