A review by madsmacmath
Housemates by Emma Copley Eisenberg

Did not finish book. Stopped at 28%.

The publisher must have been pushing this book out because I truly cannot understand why else there is as much praise and booktok hype around it as there is.

To give you a sense of what you’re looking at:

1. The cat’s name is Jigger and is often referenced with “meow meow” as audio commentary.
2. Picking their nose, scratching sebum off their scalp, and smelling each others armpits all happen without reason or context (and that’s just three quick examples)
3. There are physical descriptions of the same characters on almost every page. I fully believe in representation, but at some point, Leah being described as “big,” “bulbous,” “pushing on her belly like a balloon,” or “cheeks like huge apples” reads poorly.

Whether all the reviews are inflated, I’m sure this is the book for someone. And that someone will resonate and love chapters that open with “Jigger was kneading Leah’s right boob…”