Rating: 4 stars
Buy Link:
Amazon | iBooks | Amazon UK
Length: Novel


Micah was a professional football (soccer) player until he was publicly yanked out of the closet. After spending a lifetime fighting against who he is, he hit an all time low and wound up with PTSD and a permanent injury that causes him pain every day. Micah took a room to rent in Sam’s house and the two have become the best of friends. Micah is crushing hard on Sam and, even if Micah thinks that Sam might return his feelings, Micah doesn’t know how to be a boyfriend and Sam is too precious to him to mess it all up.

Sam works as a bartender while going to school. He considers himself more geek than chic and thinks his best friend Micah, who is a gorgeous athlete, would never be interested in him. Sam knows he’s in love with Micah, but Micah has years of baggage constantly dragging him down. Micah has no idea how to move forward with a new life and no idea how to truly move forward with Sam. Love won’t save him, but it will certainly make the ride more enjoyable.

It’s always easy to fall into a Garrett Leigh book as the atmosphere of the setting and the dialogue and characters paint a vivid picture. Micah was seen in the Lucky series, in book one of the same title, as Dom’s teammate. Falling for My Roommate is listed as a standalone, but the foundation for the story is laid out in Lucky.

Micah was publicly and viciously outed. He was so uncomfortable with who he was that he made poor choices during a downward spiral and wound up with a permanent injury to his leg. The sport he loved turned its back on him and while Micah is on medication for pain, as well as for his mental health, he’s not able to move forward much. It doesn’t help that the paparazzi still stalk him. Instead of getting a place on his own, he rented a room in Sam’s home, and why he wanted to live with a stranger at this point is only briefly approached.

Sam is the counter to Micah in looks and life experience. He and Micah have become the best of friends and Sam lives for their interactions and longs for more. There are a lot of barriers to them getting together and their relationship burns slowly, but brightly.

I liked this story, as well as Sam and Micah, but the storyline and the characters felt similar to Leigh’s other characters and storylines and it didn’t read as a fresh story to me. I have enjoyed all the ways that Leigh has made her characters unique in the past, but both Micah and Sam felt too familiar to some of her other characters.

Still, it is easy to appreciate how Leigh makes her characters and their struggles real. Micah has a lot of issues to work through and while that was a focal point, I could still feel how much the men longed to be together and how some of their burdens could be eased by having someone they could lean on. While their lives are filled with much to overcome, there is a tenderness they reserve for each other and Falling for My Roommate offers a good choice for all readers that enjoy Garrett Leigh’s work.