rsmarty 's review for:

Never Kiss Your Roommate by Lillie Vale, Philline Harms

2.0

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EDIT: dropped back to two after reading reviews from POC about the portrayal of Noelle. As a white person, I did not consider this and I understand people's disappointment. Noelle does lose her edginess the further into the book you go, but this does not excuse the stereotyping in the beginning.

EDIT 2: if you have a book set in Britain with British MCs, please spell mum the correct way. I don't know if this was an author decision, or a publisher's decision to connect with the American market, but as an Australian, it bothered me. Noelle using mom is fine since she is an American, but the other characters have no excuse.

I flip-flopped on the rating for this between 2 and 3. Ultimately, since it is a debut, I'll go up.

This was a pleasant read, albeit full of tropes and cliches (which is all right. These exist for a reason). Character-wise, I found Noelle and Jasper more engaging and interesting than the narrators. This somewhat worked in the author's favour, as they were the two that the story centred around, however the narrators should be just as, if not more, engaging. In this case, they weren't.

I appreciate that the mystery of the watcher was not a central plot point, as it was mostly ignored for two thirds of the book and I would have been irritated it if suddenly became a big deal near the end. It's not totally clear how Seth solved it, so this could have been better.

Now for the climax. It was quite the tone shift in a way that I think didn't quite hit. There was definitely enough foreshadowing, but to switch from a slice-of-life school romance to intense kidnapping plots is contrived. Also the whole thing with Gloucestershire was entirely too convenient to be believable.

It is a nice romance to read, and I'm interested to see how the author improves with experience and age.