By day, Jenna Levine works to increase access to affordable housing in the American South. By night, she writes romance novels where ridiculous things happen to beautiful people. When Jenna isn't writing she can usually be found crying over K-dramas, starting knitting projects she won't finish, or spending time with her family and small army of cats. You can find her online at JennaLevine.com or on Instagram @JennaLevineWrites.
Cassie Greenberg loves being an artist, but it's a tough way to make a living. On the brink of eviction, she's desperate when she finds a too-good-to-be-true apartment on a beautiful Chicago neighborhood. Cassie knows there has to be a catch—only someone with a secret to hid would rent out a room for that price. Of course, her new roommate, Frederick J. Fitzwilliam, is far from normal. He sleeps all day, is out at night on business, and talks like he walked out of a Regency romance novel. He also leaves Cassie heart-melting notes around the apartment, cares about her art, and asks about her day. And he doesn't look half bad shirtless, on the rare occasions they're both home and awake. But when Cassie finds bags of blood in the fridge that definitely weren't there earlier, Frederick has to come clean. . . . Cassie's sexy new roommate is a vampire. And he has a proposition for her.
The best part of this book is how fun and funny it is. Cassie navigates having a vampire roommate like any 21st-century girl would—she oscillates between being freaked out by the weirdness he exudes and grateful for the low rent (who wouldn't be!) and surprised by his hotness. Frederick is also just hilarious in a golden retriever way—he doesn't understand the modern world at all, so his turns of phrase made me laugh and the situations he finds himself and Cassie in provide for plenty of laughs. Definitely if you want a light-hearted and humorous romance novel, this is the one I'd recommend.
I also like that Levine focused a bit on the other relationships in the novel. For Frederick, that includes his texts with Reginald, and his fraught letters with his mother (I do love a multimedia chapter opener approach, and enjoyed these little bits into Frederick's mind without having to do full POV switches). For Cassie, that includes her relationship with her work and her longtime friend Sam. It was fun to see Cassie finally make her own luck with the job, and to find her way through the world without having to depend on Sam so much anymore. These helped the novel feel more full, which I always appreciate in a romance novel.
The only thing holding this one back from a full five stars is the way the last 100 pages of the novel progressed. It was difficult to ascertain what would hold Cassie and Frederick back from having a relationship with one another (aside from the vampire thing, of course). I was able to guess certain elements and how they'd come into play, but they were put into action too late to be humorous. The stakes up until that point were pretty low, so raising the stakes so drastically (ending up together! true love!) without raising the humor level to match made for an off-balanced feeling compared to the first part of the novel. Nonetheless, the premise for the third-act "breakup" is certainly fun, and matches the energy of the rest of the novel.
I really enjoyed My Roommate is a Vampire, and based on that epilogue, it seems like there might be another novel set in this universe! If that's the case, then I'll definitely be checking it out. Until then!
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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