Title: An Unexpected Roomie
Author: Laura Langa
Date: 2023
Publisher: West East
Quote: "Mom and Dad are in a hotel because they're finally renovating the bathrooms...So that leaves Rowan's."
Claire planned to stay with her best friend Meg, but Meg's just about to leave Tucson. Their parents would invite Claire to stay with them, but they're not in their home either. So of course the couch where Claire will sleep during her time in Tucson will be Meg's brother's. Claire never told Meg that she'd always been attracted to brother Rowan.
What needs to be said about what happens next is that it's not as normal as my parents' generation thought it was. Young men and young women can share houses as peacefully as sisters and brothers do. For my generation, mixed-group houses were normal. We just understood from the beginning that opposite-sex housemates can help people stay celibate and same-sex housemates can form unwelcome attractions, that gender alone does not guarantee celibate peace, so the only thing to do is share with people who can agree on standards for cleanness, quietness, and morning shower times. But some old rules remained...I rented rooms next door to single men's rooms, rooms that shared kitchens and baths with men's, but I never spent a night in a house occupied only by a man, or men. A mixed crowd was presumed wholesome; one woman and one man were still presumed to be a couple. Meg's and her family's cheerful assumption that Claire and Rowan will feel like siblings, alone together at his house, may be a new thing for the young.
In any case it doesn't work. Claire and Rowan haven't really felt like siblings since their early teens, and when they find themselves compatible as housemates too, there's only one way the story can end. Well, it's a clean romance novel.
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