(courtesy Hawkeye Publishing)
Let’s get one thing clear right from the start – we love literary romantic comedies because, and yes, there will be a lot of this particular word, we love LOVE.
Who doesn’t want to read about someone battling insurmountable, wretched circumstances, crash ‘n’ burn existential hell and yet somehow finding that special someone and finding all that blah and negativity turned into untold joy and a cosy sense that life was beaten into submission in the best and swoon-worthy of ways?
We all do; it’s what makes all the shitty stuff that besets us day upon day feel dealable.
But, and this really matters, there’s no point having Cupid’s arrows whizzing fruitfully all across the place if we don’t particularly care for the characters doing all that falling in love; sure they may be opposites attracting types and there may be some rough edges in the initial argy-bargy phase of getting to know, but deep down there must be a sense that these people are worth knowing.
The wonderful thing about Susannah’s luminously good novel, My Hot Housemate – and there are lots of good things but let’s just stick with the characters for now – is that you are rooting for the two main characters right from the get-go.
One it must be said more than the other since the story is principally told from the perspective of Aussie star-on-the-rise Indigo James who had made the all-but-inevitable trek to L.A. to see if she make a name for herself in the biggest pop culture market of them all.
The side gate clicks and a tall figure appears in the garden, every bit as hot as the night of Jazz and Stu’s wedding. Just when I thought I’d had enough of good-looking egotistical men, another one steps into the spotlight.
It hasn’t gone quite as planned, however, and after a rejection for a TV series she really wanted to land (the gig went to rival Kourtney Layne; remember that name for later), and some pretty nasty personal betrayal, she heads back to Sydney to see her folks on the North Shore, housesit for her bestie Jazz and her sweetheart of a devoted husband Stu and their very high maintenance but adorably lovable dog George.
It’s not even remotely close to what she had planned for the start of her thirties but Indigo is determined to take some time out, lick her wounds and see what lies ahead back home in Australia – who knows? She might even stay there for good and abandon dreams of the cinematic and streaming bigtime.
Having all that time alone in Jazz and Stu’s house near Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach is going to be just the idyll she needs to sort herself out and to figure next steps in a life that’s looked more painful and sundered than Indigo likes.
Alas, all that meditative solitude is blown out of the water when it transpires that she’s going to have a housemate, an arrogantly handsome soul by the name of Jeremy Taylor whom she met at Jazz and Stu’s wedding some five years before, and who, a kiss and almost more aside, did not leave the most positive of lasting impressions.
(courtesy Hawkeye Publishing / Photo (c) Sally Flegg)
It’s a classic opposites attract set-up – which you suspect, though there is scant evidence, that Jazz and Stu concocted; all that talk of “Oops! Did we invite you both at the same time?” sounds a tad too convenient – and while you know really early on that Indigo and Jerermy are going to end up together, Hardy has a great deal of fun making sure the road to that inevitable pairing up is as emotionally thoughtful and enjoyable as possible.
Key to her sophisticated rom-com writing is the fact that Indigo and Jeremy are both inherently decent people; Indigo is almost immediately painted as someone you’d want as a friend while Jeremy has to be vouched for by Jazz and Stu, and frankly just about everyone he charmingly meets, before you buy him as someone Indigo, whom we already love, truly deserves.
But both characters emerge as solid good and caring, if flawed people – who wants perfection? Where on earth is the fact with that? – and while there are some emotional red herrings dangled before us, My Hot Housemate thrives as a brilliantly engrossing rom-com because the characters are so damn likable and you want them, no you need them, to work out as intended.
Rather fittingly, the path to true love is not smooth, and while you may know where it’s all heading, and you’d be right, Hardy doesn’t simply connect some fairly obvious dots and leave you to it; in fact, this is one rom-com where the obvious isn’t arrived by a simple A to B route and My Hot Housemate is all the richer and more rewarding for it.
I’ve thrown a spanner into the works. Not just one, but the complete twelve pack. And it’s short-fused the whole system. Just when I thought we were becoming friends … maybe even something more? Well, not now.
Adding to the fun is that Sydney is given a chance to shine.
While rom-coms set in the UK or U.S. are hugely enjoyable to read as Australians because it’s almost literally a whole other world away, having love play its happily fateful hand out in your own backyard is a joy, a chance to see familiar landscapes get painted with a red and rosy blush.
Hardy’s writing style is bright and breezy, full of snappy dialogue and witty retorts and some very angry and sad moments which reallt resonate, but it also possesses real affecting humanity which is rare in a rom-com.
She adds emotional heft to the delightful froth and fun of the usual rom-com style, which she totally makes her own, and it’s this substance of life experience and scars and tears that makes all the falling in love dynamics feel far more grounded and yet awww-worthy than the usual genre story.
My Hot Housemate is a superlatively good, a smartly-written, empathetic, funny, meditative and grounded in the real stuff of life cocktail of love, life and broken hearts and mended souls that bounces along at a blisteringly blockbuster rom-com pace while still feeling emotionally intimate, heartfelt and fun and leaving you feel like love isn’t just possible, it’s all but inevitable especially when two characters as fulsomely and wonderfully written as Indigo and Jeremy are involved.
You want them to get their happy ever after, and they get it but not before lots of laughs, not a little tension and the bubbly joy of love playing out in ways that sizzle and delight and make you glad to be alive, making My Hot Housemate one of the standout rom-coms of the year so far.