Kieran Shipley works two jobs – three, if you could the work he does around his family’s farm – one of which is at his cousin Audrey’s café. They’re looking to hire more staff (one of the co-owners is pregnant) and after chatting briefly, Roderick is asked to do a couple of days’ trial for them. His search isn’t going well when he decides to indulge in a decent cup of coffee at the Busy Bean Café… and suddenly things start looking up. Roderick, who‘s been through culinary school and previously worked as a baker, starts looking for work, spending the nights uncomfortably – and perhaps dangerously – in his car. His father is as unbending and bigoted as ever, saying Roderick can stay – but only if he will go to church and ask God’s forgiveness for being gay.

Hoping that perhaps his father will have relaxed his stance a little, and realising that he misses Vermont, Roderick goes home in the hopes he’ll be able to stay there until he can find a job and get himself back on his feet. But after breaking up with his boyfriend of three years – a country singer who was firmly in the closet and had no intention of coming out – Roddy has nowhere else to go.

It’s been years since he’s been back there or seen his parents, who are ultra conservative and don’t approve of his ‘lifestyle’. The book opens as Roderick Waites pulls up outside his parents’ home in the small town of Colebury in Vermont. Roommate is the starting point – and I’ll confess now that I haven’t read any of the other books, so I’ll likely have missed any of the recurring characters but the good news is that I didn’t have any problems following the story, so you can jump in here, as I did, and not feel as though you’ve missed anything important! The series is set among the apple orchards and breweries of Vermont, and will feature some of the characters who’ve appeared in the True North books already, and others who are completely new, and it’s a big venture, comprised of four different mini-series.

Sarina Bowen’s The Understatement of the Year and the co-authored (with Elle Kennedy) Him/Us are some of my favourite m/m stories and go-to re-listens, so when I saw that Teddy Hamilton was on board for Roommate, the first book in a new series that takes place in the world of her True North novels, I was more than eager to listen to it. Narrated by Teddy Hamilton and Stephen Dexter

Read roommate by sarina bowen