I used to be a neat freak. There…I said it. I’m talking everything had its place, socks arranged by color in the drawer, literally hundreds of books and cassettes alphabetized and shelved, no dishes in the sink when I went to bed at night, bed made every morning when I left for work. My desk was chaos, but that’s been the case since college when I would dump things on my desk after class in the middle of every newspaper deadline. I was single. I lived alone. Life was simpler.

Then I got cats, who left toys all over my apartment, but things were still super organized. Then I got married and moved a two-bedroom house and a two-bedroom apartment into a different two-bedroom apartment. And Dennis was a packrat (The Therapy of Throwing Things Away (Or Not)). Then we had a kid. I was no longer single. I no longer lived alone. Life became way more complicated, and all bets were off. Even after we bought a three-bedroom house with a garage, though, Dennis just collected more stuff, so I don’t think it’s ever been as organized as it could be.

I won’t live in filth obviously, but my logic now is that we live here. On any given day, if you show up at my door, there’s probably stuff on the kitchen counter or table. There’s probably a load of laundry in a basket in the living room. You’ll probably find a load of towels or blankets ready to go into the washing machine or the dryer. More than likely, there are dishes in the sink. And there are dog toys literally everywhere.

When Corinne was younger, I used to joke that, if I were a stay-at-home mom, my house would always be clean and I would be my goal weight. One of my SAHM friends informed me that I was seriously misguided because there were always other things she found to do that felt more important—room mom, PTA, volunteering.

I no longer have the energy (or the desire) to live in a picture perfect house because this is my home. House versus home…there’s a distinct difference. We live here…every day…and I have other things that I would rather do than making sure everything is put away. I like spending time with my kid or reading outside in the gazebo or working on these blog posts. All of those things are more important to me than a perfect house.

Are there people who spend every weekend cleaning? Sure there are, and they have my respect. I just don’t want to be them. 😉 I have always said that I don’t mind at all when my mother-in-law comes to visit. My home is cleaner when she leaves than it is when she arrives. But even she has slowed down. She doesn’t spend every day dusting or cleaning the floors like she used to.

So I don’t mind if you drop in unannounced. Just know that my home is probably in some sort of organized chaos. I may have to move something off the kitchen table or one of the chairs. I might have to fold up a blanket that was tossed aside on the couch. On the flip side, if I’m coming to visit you, I don’t care how neat or messy your home is. I know you live there. Don’t kill yourself cleaning up for me because I’m not coming to visit your house, no matter how stunning it is. I’m coming to visit with you. 😊

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Book Review

⭐⭐
2 Stars for Roommaid by Sariah Wilson

301 pages
Publisher: Montlake
Publication Date: October 1, 2020
This title was an Amazon First Reads selection.

Publisher’s Description

Madison Huntington is determined to live her dreams. That means getting out from under her family’s wealth and influence by saying no to the family business, her allowance, and her home. But on a teacher’s salary, the real world comes as a rude awakening—especially when she wakes up every morning on a colleague’s couch. To get a place of her own (without cockroaches, mold, or crime scene tape), Madison accepts a position as a roommaid. In exchange for free room and board, all she needs to do is keep her busy roommate’s penthouse clean and his dog company. So what if she’s never washed a dish in her life. She can figure this out, right?

Madison is pretty confident she can fake it well enough that Tyler Roth will never know the difference. The finance whiz is rich and privileged and navigates the same social circles as her parents—but to him she’s just a teacher in need of an apartment. He’s everything Madison has run from, but his kindhearted nature, stomach-fluttering smile, and unexpected insecurities only make her want to get closer. And Tyler is warming to the move.

Rewarding job. Perfect guy. Great future. With everything so right, what could go wrong? Madison is about to find out.

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Main Characters:

• Madison Huntington – 23 years old, second-grade teacher at upscale private Millstone Academy, recently disowned by her wealthy and elite parents for pursuing a teaching career
• Tyler Roth – 26 years old, “in finance,” lives in a penthouse apartment with his dog Pigeon
• Shay Simmons – Madison’s best friend, met in college where she was two years ahead of Madison, teaches advanced mathematics at Millstone, recommended Madison for the job
• Delia Hawthorne – teaches art at Millstone, she and Shay had been first-year teachers together and immediately bonded, drives Madison to work every day

     

I really wanted to like this story based on the description. Like any good rags-to-riches story, Roommaid focused on the idea of Madison Huntington being down on her luck, taken in by a wealthy stranger, falling in love, and living happily ever after. A true Cinderella tale, right? And it IS a romance after all.

The difference here was that Madison comes from money—a LOT of money. But since Madison’s parents didn’t approve of her teacher career choice, they kicked her out of their biggest-of-the-big Houston mansion and cut her off financially. Madison came from snobbery, and when the book began, her aunt was showing her atrocious apartments to get her off best friend Shay’s couch, where she’s been sleeping for the three months since her parents kicked her out.

This was where the suspension of disbelief fell apart for me, and it was only the first chapter. Over the course of the first several chapters, I came up with several questions.

***SPOILERS*** SPOILERS***SPOILERS***

Madison’s parents did not want her to be a teacher, so they clearly disapproved of her major in education. Regardless of their reasoning, why did they wait until she had a degree and a job to cut her off? It’s not like her degree qualified her to work for her father’s company, which was what was expected. So they paid for school, let her get a job, and THEN kicked her out? In fact, it comes to light that they influenced her hiring at Millstone Academy as well as her living arrangement with Tyler. So they wanted her to work, but they wanted her to live with Tyler so she’d be protected, but they wanted her to marry Brad, but they wanted to get her fired so she would come crawling back to them? Seriously, I’m not sure what they wanted.

One of Madison’s twin sisters, who are 10 years older, did not go into the family business but had married one of the vice presidents of their father’s firm. Why was that deemed acceptable, but Madison’s relationship with (and expected engagement to) Bradford Beauregard Branson IV was not? Madison’s mother was apparently thrilled at the prospect of being connected to the Bransons, but Brad stopped talking to Madison because her parents cut her off. Why not keep her in the house and let her get engaged to Brad and have everything play out from there?

Madison was a spoiled rich kid, had everything done for her, never wanted for anything, but she still went to college and lived on campus. She spent several months living with Shay. She watched a ton of television, so I’m assuming she had seen commercials at some point. How was it possible that she had absolutely no life skills…like nothing, nada, zilch, bit fat zero? She had no sense of direction, she put “something called Dawn that was blue” in the dishwasher (cliché much?), she didn’t know that bleach will take the color out of a couch. Could someone (even a super-spoiled rich kid someone) really be this clueless? Could she not read directions? She seemed to Google everything but still had a ridiculous number of mishaps that Tyler was conveniently never home for.

When Tyler invited Madison to join him at a charity event to show him how to network, I got the impression that he was some sort of personal financial/investment advisor. We’re never told exactly what he does for a living, but it seemed like his income would be based off the earnings of his clients. He lived in a penthouse apartment. He was super wealthy. Why would Madison have to show him how to schmooze wealthy potential clients? Clearly, he knew what he was doing already if he earned enough to live in a penthouse apartment and send money to his mother (another piece of the story that really isn’t even worth going into).

All that was in just the first nine chapters…a third of the way through the book.

Madison and Tyler spent time together in the apartment like they’re college students (“don’t watch The Bachelor without me”). Tyler was over-the-top laid back, which seemed unlikely for someone in a high-stress finance job where the hours are typically pretty killer. And that was another thing. Tyler didn’t work killer hours. In fact, he was regularly home just a couple hours after Madison when he wasn’t traveling.

There were some nice moments between Madison and Tyler and some decent dialog throughout the book, but it felt inauthentic at times. Madison desperately wanted to escape her family dynamic, but she “taught” Tyler to be fake and disingenuous with potential clients in the same social circle as her parents. I liked Tyler as a character…as a human. I just didn’t think he needed Madison’s guidance the way the story laid it out.

The one person I truly enjoyed was Shay. She was supportive, funny, and went out of her way to help her friend. She had the best dialog. (“So this Tyler guy wants someone to live in his apartment who will clean up after him, look after this dog, and not have sex with him. Don’t they usually call those people wives?”)

The conflict that always comes in a romance…you know the one, there’s a fight and the couple splits up and then they get back together…came with only about 30 pages left in the book. Not a lot of time to reasonably work through everything. And I found it hard to believe that Tyler didn’t make the connection between the Huntingtons he worked for and the Huntington he lived with, especially since Madison had made it clear that she came from money. How many wealthy Huntingtons are we supposed to believe lived in Houston?

There were other things that bothered me—secondary characters that did nothing to move the story forward, Tyler’s back story with his dad was kind of irrelevant, a woman Tyler dated twice who still randomly came up to his apartment and then told Madison he was a bad guy (although we never got proof of anything). But I’ll stop before I detail more problems that make me move my rating down even more.

It’s a light, clean romance but definitely a miss for me.

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