content warnings: explicit sexual content, mentions of racism
representation: Black fat wlw protagonist, Black wlw main character, Korean main character, M/F/F main relationship, biracial (Black-Korean) main and side characters

“‘And since you’re our visitor, you should let us take care of you,’ Mrs. Yu says as she stands from her chair and walks toward me.

I’m a good girl. I was raised right. I was raised to respect my elders, but every thought that enters my brain in that moment is very disrespectful. [...]

My thoughts are anything but respectful — they’re filthy and needy, and my pussy is getting wet. Disrespect never felt so right, though.”

God, what a great feeling to read one of your new favourite books! This is the third book I've read for this round of smutathon, and the previous two underwhelmed to say the least. This, though. This book that I had absolutely no expecatations of managed to knock it out of the park, seemingly with complete ease.

The Roommate follows Celeste, a college student who is going to spend a few weeks over winter break with her roommate's family. But there's a problem the second she meets Mr. and Mrs. Yu: they're both smoking hot and Celeste pretty much can't look at them without being turned on.

This book is so well-written. There isn't any gorgeous prose or complex ideas, but I think it's more difficult than people realise to write something in the conversational tone that this book does without it coming across as lazy or obnoxious. There are times when Celeste talks directly to the reader as she recounts her winter break and that's something that usually drives me up the wall, but Brandy Bush makes it feel so natural, something which I found even more impressive when I reached the end of the book and discovered it was a debut!

It's not just the writing style, though; the characters are also given exactly as much depth as they need in something like this. I don't know anyone's entire life story but I know a few key things about each main character that makes them easily identifiable and, most importantly, makes me root for them to achieve their goal. I'm aware of how basic and simplistic this sounds, but once you read enough erotica you realise how rare these things actually are.

The sex scenes are also written incredibly. A lot of erotica falls into the same trap that action movies do (go with me here) where they won't end the book with their best sex/action scene, but not The Roommate. Oh, no, The Roommate over and over again makes you think you've read it's best sex scene and then somehow has an even better one a chapter later.

This is one of my favourite books of 2020 and I truly cannot wait to read Bush's second book, The Nanny. I implore all smut lovers to read this because odds are it'll become one of your favourite's too!