When New Jersey girl Elizabeth gets her rooming assignment for her freshman year at Berkeley, she’s comping at the bit to get in touch with this girl named Lauren who lives in San Francisco. But when she reaches out, she’s met with short, clipped responses that raise Lauren’s worries about what this year of living together would be like. Thus begins the relationship between two soon-to-be roommates in Tara Altebrando and Sara Zarr’s Roomies. 

Little by little over the course of the summer between the end of high school and beginning at Berkeley, though, the girls exchange more and more with one another and find themselves revealing some of their deepest secrets with one another. How do you make the transition from high school to college? How do you — if you do at all — break up with friends? What about boyfriends? Do you take a chance on a guy who you know you’ll only be able to be with for a couple of months? The girls grapple with these challenging questions via email and while it all seems peachy, things take a turn south when Elizabeth reveals one of the biggest reasons she wants to go to Berkeley: the long lost hope she’ll be able to reconnect with her gay father, who left her and her mother when she was seven years old.

Elizabeth knows where her dad works, and when she slips that into an email to Lauren, Lauren does a little sleuthing — unintentionally — and while she hoped to keep it a secret from Elizabeth (who is under the belief her father can’t see her before college starts since he has to vacation in Italy), Lauren spills the beans. And Elizabeth is not happy. How dare a girl she doesn’t even know meddle in her affairs? 

This book is on the lighter side, but it explores SO much good stuff. It asks the hard questions about transitions and moving, as well as tough questions about what relationships are and how relationships develop. Both girls have really memorable voices and bring great back stories with them to their budding roommate relationship/friendship, and Zarr (who writes as Lauren) and Altebrando (who writes as Elizabeth) deliver incredibly authentic girls who experience the entire range of what anticipation feels like and looks like. There is a nice story about sexuality here, too, as well as budding romances for both girls — though that never takes a higher place in the story than THEIR friendship. Elizabeth gets to enjoy losing her virginity and she divulges that to Lauren in a very real, very positive manner that leaves Elizabeth not feeling like she’s missing out on something but that, instead, she gets to be there for her friend for HER big, life-changing-to-her moment. 

There’s also a well-drawn pair of stories about family here. Lauren comes from a massive family with little privacy, whereas Elizabeth comes from a family of just her and her mother where privacy is achieved through secrecy and deceit. Thus why both act and react as they do. 

Many books that are worked through email feel like they’re trying too hard, but it never felt that way here. It’s very authentic — and the way that Elizabeth and Lauren learn to trust and care for one another comes through these emails. Little by little they test the waters of how much they can share and how much they can pry, and they both put themselves out there as givers and takers. It’s one of — if not the — most fascinating and true means of how friendships happen and grow. I love that Zarr and Altebrando weren’t afraid to show that sometimes the most VALUABLE relationships are those which are the ones you get to create this way. And more than that, the way you nurture it is not any different than those you have in your every day, in person interactions. 

Hand Altebrando and Zarr’s Roomies off to readers eager for that next chapter in their lives, as well as those who love a good story about friendship or family. I see this being a great book for graduation presents for girls who will be heading off to college after high school, but I also see it as the kind of book for any reader worries about changes in his or her life, period. This is a book about transitions and about the anticipation therein, which transcends the roommate situation. 

Review copy received from the publisher. Roomies is available tomorrow.