Wanted: female roommate to take over lease. Non-smoker. No boys allowed.When Alyssa’s roommate leaves her in a lurch, she’s desperate to find someone, anyone, to move in with her. Rent is coming due and she can’t afford to pay it by herself. There’s only one rule: no boyfriends allowed. Her religious family would throw a fit if they knew she was living in a house with boys.Needed: new place ASAP. … house with boys.
Needed: new place ASAP. Female preferred.
Hannah doesn’t have a boyfriend. But her cheating ex-girlfriend has made her housing situation untenable. With her career as a musician about to take off, she can’t afford a distraction. A tip from an old friend leads Hannah to Alyssa and a roommate match made in heaven is born.
Filled: one girl next door plus one singer equals domestic bliss?
Alyssa thinks Hannah is really cute. Which wouldn’t be a problem if she were into women. Hannah has no interest in dating a straight girl. But when sparks fly, neither young woman can say no to the chemistry between them.
Despite their passion, Alyssa’s worried about the reaction from her conservative family. Even worse, Hannah’s career may take her out of state for good, stopping their relationship before it even begins. They will need to face their problems together or be torn apart.
Can Alyssa overcome who she thinks she is in order to be with the woman she loves? Can Hannah learn to trust again after a failed relationship?
Or will they both be putting up housing wanted ads before their lease is up?
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Review originally posted at http://tympestbooks.wordpress.com
Alyssa’s roommate ditched on her with no warning, leaving her desperate for a replacement before rent comes due. It has to be another girl, or her super Catholic mom would flip. Hannah just caught her girlfriend cheating on her, so that living arrangement doesn’t work anymore. Good thing a former co-worker told her about the roommate she just ditched on. New roommate is super cute. But Alyssa is straight, totally, maybe, and Hannah doesn’t want to go there again. Will they wind up together anyway or will both wind up looking for someone new?
The Housing Crisis by Kate McLay is very much a book that I wish was longer. The story is super cute. The characters are enjoyable. It makes me want more.
Which is actually a really good place to start. One of my only issues with the book is a side effect of it being as short as it is. The relationship is really sweet, but I would have loved to see it developed more. We’re more told that Hannah and Alyssa are increasingly attracted to each other, than allowed to see it develop. As always, I want the build, I want to see the relationship grow from friends to girlfriends. In the same vein, I would like to have seen more of Alyssa realizing that she’s totally into her roommate and not as straight as she thought. More of them dealing with Alyssa playing it straight in public and how that affects Hannah. More of Hannah wanting to fall for Alyssa but being held back by last time. I want to see the character struggles that lead to the triumphant ending.
This is my single big complaint about the book, it’s so short that the ideas behind the story don’t get expanded much if at all. We go from Alyssa being so straight arrows are jealous to being told that she’s been struggling with dealing with her attraction to Hannah for weeks and, never mind struggling, going for it. It goes similarly for Hannah, we’re told that she doesn’t want to fall for another straight girl because the last one broke her heart, but we don’t see her worrying much about it past them hooking up. We see a fair amount of Alyssa’s boss, Martha, but I feel like there should have been more with her. Like she could have been much more developed and contributed a lot more to the story.
So that’s my issue with the book. What else was there to it that I wanted it more developed because of? Friends, this book was adorable and sweet and just a bite of cuteness. I have been trained by pop culture and other novels not to accept when a book aimed at adults is being sweet and fluffy and this was a really nice break from that. I didn’t find a character in the book proper that I disliked. The few scenes that were uncomfortable were meant to be. Most of the bits that we iffy were things that expanding on character and situations could have handled easily.
It was a book that just made me happy, which isn’t a thing I’ve had a lot of lately. It was fun for the sake of itself, a happy little romance story that chooses to be positive. For all that I spent two paragraphs talking about it needing to be expanded on, I keep bringing this up because I want more stories like this. I want more of this story, like a follow up of Alyssa and Hannah and what happens after the end of this one.
So, yeah, this gets a five out of five. I would read Kate McLay again and very much hope that she has a successful career writing.
The story was ok but the editing was horrible. There were errors throughout.
Short but enjoyable. Good characters, who I would have liked to see further developed.