Elena Armas is a Spanish writer, a self-confessed hopeless romantic, and proud book hoarder. After years of devouring HEAs and talking—okay, fine, yelling—nonstop about them, she has finally taken the leap and decided to create some of her own. She hopes these stories make your heart skip a beat or two, your palms a little sweaty, and your cheeks flush in that rosy pink that makes other people want to peek at the page you are reading. You can find Elena at www.authorelenaarmas.com, and on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Goodreads, Pinterest, and TikTok. You can find more of my reviews of Elena's work here.
Rosie Graham has a problem. A few, actually. She just quit her well-paid job to focus on her secret career as a romance writer, only to enter a creative slump. Then, the ceiling of her New York apartment literally crumbles on her. She heads to her best friend Lina's apartment, not knowing that Lina has already lent the studio to her cousin Lucas, who Rosie has been stalking—for lack of a better word—on Instagram. To Rosie's surprise, Lucas offers to let her stay with him, at least until she can find some affordable temporary housing. Soon, Rosie discovers that Lucas is intent on coming to her rescue like a Spanish knight in shining armor. Only this one strolls around the place in a towel, has a distracting grin, an irresistible accent, and comes with a set of mad cooking skills. And when Lucas learns of Rosie's writer's block, he proposes an outrageous idea to bring back her literary muse and meet her deadline: he'll take her on a series of experimental dates meant to jump-start her romantic inspiration. Rosie has nothing to lose. Her silly online crush is totally under control—but Lucas's stay in New York has an expiration date, and six weeks may not be enough time for either her or her deadline.
Elena Armas is the queen of slow burn romances. She is somehow able to build this incredible tension between her characters, whether they start out hating each other (The Spanish Love Deception) or as friends (The American Roommate Experiment). This tension, coupled with the fact that Armas does not let her characters get what they want that easily, makes for a slow burn that is as agonizing to read as it must be for the characters to experience.
Lots of readers are claiming Rosie and Lucas to be relatable characters. Rosie is the perfect planner who quit her job to pursue her secret romance writing career. Lucas, having been a pro surfer for most of his adult life, is now stalled in life, and has been traveling the United States of the past few months in search of his purpose. While I don't personally relate much to the characters as a whole, there were elements of each character that I found relatable: the way Rosie always picks up the phone for family; how it takes a while for Lucas to open up about his past to Rosie; and how both characters needed to figure themselves out first before taking the risk on the other. It makes their romance more believable that we have these elements of their characters first.
The only thing that did not make this a five-star read for me was the overall writing and language. While I feel that Armas can perfectly capture emotion and essence, there are some technical things that keep reading The American Roommate Experiment a fully enjoyable read. For example, when writing dialogue, the character's always start or end by addressing the other person they're talking to, which gets annoying and receptive very fast. The work itself is also full of sentence fragments and comma splices that I don't think personally enhances the style or emotion of the work. Rather, it just hindered my understanding at points on what the characters were trying to say.
Overall, Armas is a fantastic romance novelist, one whose work I do enjoy, as it provides a quick read with relatable characters in relatable (if not always entirely realistic, which I love) situations. I do hope she ventures out of The Spanish Love Deception world so we can get more of her wonderful writing. In the meantime, you can find Elena at www.authorelenaarmas.com, and on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Goodreads, Pinterest, and TikTok. You can find more of my reviews of Elena's work here.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
Comments
Post a Comment