Under One Roof

I was actually pretty indifferent about the dynamic here until he picked her up??????? That is threatening and strange and not cute or funny it's fucking weird. He's trying to buy her out of the house, make her uncomfortable enough to leave, they're still new in each others lives and he thinks it's okay to grab her???? He does this several times but the first time he does is baffling.

I understand that this genre of book is based on tropes but god every line is like a sassy Twitter recap of a TikTok book review of this book. It's not just that you know what's going to happen or what a character is going to say it's that it's exactly what words will be on the page.

Not to mention how utterly insufferable these characters are. Everything about them can be gleaned from clicking through a millennials instagram story. There is no depth, no chemistry, nothing fun or cute or interesting about them apart or together.

Novellas can be packed with interesting characters, well built relationships and good pacing this has none of that. There actually isn't any humor in this either, unless you count references to Disney movies, online comment section templates for epic burns, and celebrity name dropping as sooo silly goofy.

Also god we get he's fucking huge, if he's so fucking big and tall why isn't a NBA player.

The woman lead also suffer from some form “not like other girls” I wasn't going to post this review until I saw the title of this novella series was “STEMinist Novellas” which is insulting. What? It's feminist because she gets harassed and belittled at work? Which is a problem we never see her solve, she is actually passive about her position at work and it is the man who 1) tries to solve the problem and 2) puts her in the position to get the problem solved.

AND GOOD HELL THE ENDING?????? Worst sex scene I've ever read. Up until the sex scene there is nothing explicit, erotic, or sexy happening in the text. He walks around their shared house without a shirt once, he walks in on her showering but those are framed more so as cute scenes with undertones of sexual tension. The absolute whiplash I got when the first smutty line dropped was crazy because it does not ease into it, saying something like “I wish he would pull my legs apart and fuck me over the counter” isn't actually a good way to transition into a sex scene????? It wasn't just clunky it was jarring.

Every line in that sex scene is horrendous.