Review: "The Roommate Rule" by Georgia Stone

The Roommate Rule by Georgia Stone
Published July 2026 via Harper Perennial
★★★★

Dylan is due a vacation—and if six all-expenses-paid weeks in Wales with a stranger weren't what she had planned, well, she can go with the flow. Definitely. For sure. Especially since there will definitely be separate bedrooms. Definitely.

I read this more or less entirely for the setting: I haven't been to Wales, and it's relatively high on my list of places to go. And six weeks there seems like more than enough time to get a feel for it! Happily, I liked the relationship a lot; Max is not my type, but then, Dylan thinks he's not her type either, and she eventually realizes otherwise. They do a lot of talking, some of it about more serious things than others, and while they have clashes (again, some more serious than others), they're good about not letting those fester for too long.

There are plenty of secondary characters, which is nice—Dylan and Max get to know each other not just on their own but within the context of other people, which feels important (like, you should know how your romantic interest interacts with their friends, you know? And also with relative acquaintances who they don't necessarily want to befriend). One character does kind of drop off the face of the earth once Dylan and Max heat things up a bit; it's nice that there isn't unnecessary drama there, but it did feel like a bit of a loose end. On the other hand, if I read things right, there's room for a related book with yet another character in the future...

Now, quibbles: On a practical level, the setup for this book does not make sense. Max has been invited for an influencers' weekend six-week, all-inclusive trip. It's a new venue that's trying to build some buzz, so inviting influencers makes sense—but six weeks is a huge chunk of time to host a bunch of influencers. Financial cost aside, that's weeks and weeks and weeks to entertain a group of people with varied personalities and needs and expectations. There are lots of excursions and events planned, but most of them they seem to do only once, even over six weeks; what's more, excursions aside, I don't think anyone leaves the compound—they seem perfectly happy to be off at summer camp with no ability to go to the shops or the cinema or whatever (or, say, to replace a critical but lost item...), and while I believe that for some of them, I don't believe it for everyone.

Obviously it's nicer for Max and Dylan to have six weeks to get to know each other, outside the requirements of their (well, Dylan's) ordinary lives. But...I can't help but think that it would have made a lot more sense if the Wales part of things had taken up one week, not six. (Also...at an influencers' retreat, surely everyone—but especially the people not used to being filmed—should have to sign some version of a UK GDPR form?)

That's a long quibble, but it wasn't actually one that bothered me much—just something that I started wondering about midway through and then wasn't quite able to let go of. Would recommend; would stash away in case I need a feel-good reread in the future; would consider getting overalls just to replicate Dylan's look on the (US) cover, except I'm too short to pull them off. (I don't think they're true to the book, but the overalls vibe is true to the book, so I'll take it.)

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.