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A review by maggiemaggio
Roomies by Tara Altebrando, Sara Zarr
4.0
4.5 stars
Can I go away to college again? I know I’ll (hopefully!) be starting grad school in the fall, but it’s so not the same thing. This book made me yearn for my summer before college (which I barely remember (cough Mike’s Hard Lemonade cough)) and all of the nervousness/excitement/change that comes along with it. I expected to like this book, but in the end I was completely smitten by it.
My favorite surprise was how little of the book was made up of the actual emails. I was worried I’d be reading a book that was mostly written in emails, but that wasn’t the case at all. I’d say if a chapter was 10 pages maybe a page and a half or two pages would be the actual emails. The rest of the chapter was about what else was going in in Elizabeth or Lauren’s lives, with a fair amount of each of them thinking about their roommate. I also loved that the emails weren’t repetitive. They either took a new spin on something we already knew or filled us in on a part of the story that had been left out of the narrative.
Of the two characters, Lauren and Elizabeth (who sometimes goes by EB and who Lauren refers to as Ebb (which I LOVED)), I definitely related more to Elizabeth. Lauren lives in San Francisco with this huge family. She has five younger siblings who are all much younger than she is. She’s kind of like a third parent to them, which she doesn’t completely mind, but also kind of minds. Lauren also has really amazing, supportive parents (even though I thought they were nuts for having SIX kids!). Elizabeth, on the other hand, lives in New Jersey with her single mother. Her father came out of the closet and left when she was five years old. EB’s mom isn’t the greatest, she’s kind of been beaten down my life and doesn’t always make the best choices when it comes to men. Even though I have two parents who are happily married to each other I definitely related more to EB’s situation of going to college away from home, worrying about whether your friends will still be your friends, and trying to figure out who you want to be in college.
A lot of what EB and Lauren discuss revolves around first love. When the story stars off EB is dating someone, but she doesn’t really feel anything for him romantically, it’s just kind of easy because they’re both part of the same group of friends. One day when she’s working she meets Mark and they have an instant connection, but she’s not sure what to do since she’s technically still dating someone and because she’s leaving for college across the country in a couple months. Lauren is very single when the story starts, but she starts to have feelings for Keyon, the son of the guy who owns the sandwich shop where she works. But she holds back because she feels like he’s more popular and experienced than she is and she’s not sure if he’s really interested. The approach the story took to first, young love rang so true to me. How many people really end up with the person they were dating right after high school? Especially when they both go away for school. I loved EB and Lauren’s attitudes about the longevity of their crushes/relationships.
This might be controversial, but whatever, I really enjoyed how race was handled in this book. EB at one point wonders if Lauren’s white and I think that’s a totally normal question that for some reason is often treated as taboo. Keyon, Lauren’s love interest, is black and even though she thinks of herself and her family as open-minded San Francisco liberals she still worries what Keyon’s parents think of her as a white girl and what her parents will think of Keyon on a black man. In my opinion it’s really healthy to talk about race and acknowledge it rather than push it under the rug.
Bottom Line: Roomies was a great book for me to end 2013 with. I fell in love with EB and Lauren and seriously rooted for their friendships with each other and their relationships at home. It was fun to read a story from this perspective and from this time in a young adult’s life. I can’t recommend this enough. Start 2014 with this one!
This review first appeared on my blog.
Can I go away to college again? I know I’ll (hopefully!) be starting grad school in the fall, but it’s so not the same thing. This book made me yearn for my summer before college (which I barely remember (cough Mike’s Hard Lemonade cough)) and all of the nervousness/excitement/change that comes along with it. I expected to like this book, but in the end I was completely smitten by it.
My favorite surprise was how little of the book was made up of the actual emails. I was worried I’d be reading a book that was mostly written in emails, but that wasn’t the case at all. I’d say if a chapter was 10 pages maybe a page and a half or two pages would be the actual emails. The rest of the chapter was about what else was going in in Elizabeth or Lauren’s lives, with a fair amount of each of them thinking about their roommate. I also loved that the emails weren’t repetitive. They either took a new spin on something we already knew or filled us in on a part of the story that had been left out of the narrative.
Of the two characters, Lauren and Elizabeth (who sometimes goes by EB and who Lauren refers to as Ebb (which I LOVED)), I definitely related more to Elizabeth. Lauren lives in San Francisco with this huge family. She has five younger siblings who are all much younger than she is. She’s kind of like a third parent to them, which she doesn’t completely mind, but also kind of minds. Lauren also has really amazing, supportive parents (even though I thought they were nuts for having SIX kids!). Elizabeth, on the other hand, lives in New Jersey with her single mother. Her father came out of the closet and left when she was five years old. EB’s mom isn’t the greatest, she’s kind of been beaten down my life and doesn’t always make the best choices when it comes to men. Even though I have two parents who are happily married to each other I definitely related more to EB’s situation of going to college away from home, worrying about whether your friends will still be your friends, and trying to figure out who you want to be in college.
A lot of what EB and Lauren discuss revolves around first love. When the story stars off EB is dating someone, but she doesn’t really feel anything for him romantically, it’s just kind of easy because they’re both part of the same group of friends. One day when she’s working she meets Mark and they have an instant connection, but she’s not sure what to do since she’s technically still dating someone and because she’s leaving for college across the country in a couple months. Lauren is very single when the story starts, but she starts to have feelings for Keyon, the son of the guy who owns the sandwich shop where she works. But she holds back because she feels like he’s more popular and experienced than she is and she’s not sure if he’s really interested. The approach the story took to first, young love rang so true to me. How many people really end up with the person they were dating right after high school? Especially when they both go away for school. I loved EB and Lauren’s attitudes about the longevity of their crushes/relationships.
This might be controversial, but whatever, I really enjoyed how race was handled in this book. EB at one point wonders if Lauren’s white and I think that’s a totally normal question that for some reason is often treated as taboo. Keyon, Lauren’s love interest, is black and even though she thinks of herself and her family as open-minded San Francisco liberals she still worries what Keyon’s parents think of her as a white girl and what her parents will think of Keyon on a black man. In my opinion it’s really healthy to talk about race and acknowledge it rather than push it under the rug.
Bottom Line: Roomies was a great book for me to end 2013 with. I fell in love with EB and Lauren and seriously rooted for their friendships with each other and their relationships at home. It was fun to read a story from this perspective and from this time in a young adult’s life. I can’t recommend this enough. Start 2014 with this one!
This review first appeared on my blog.