Love, Off the Record is one of my favorite romances (haven’t read it yet? let me convince you here), and I am delighted to welcome author Samantha Markum to talk about and celebrate the release of her newest romance, The Roommate Arrangement!
Interview with Samantha Markum
Let’s start off with a quick teaser about your book—describe The Roommate Arrangement in five words:
As someone who is famously long-winded, this is so hard for me! But I’ll try to boil it down to its simplest premise: brother’s best friend college romance
What was the inspiration for The Roommate Arrangement?
The friends/random housing situation was very loosely inspired by something that someone I knew was going through when I first came up with the idea. I think it really solidified as I thought more about all the challenges with friends and roommates in college, especially that first year.
Throwing in an accidental roommates situation between Blair and Jamie, her very annoying brother’s slightly less annoying best friend, and keeping that a secret from her entire family, was really me looking for ways to turn up the heat on Blair, who is already basically in a pressure cooker with everything she’s gotten herself into. I think most of the choices I made in this book were to crank the heat higher and see what would happen, because Blair is very much a character who, let’s just say, isn’t great at adapting haha. And that made writing her very fun, and also very challenging at times!
You write the best banter. What is your process for crafting dynamic dialogue and character chemistry?
First of all, thank you! Banter is incredibly important to me, because I think it can really carry a story. I would say this book was the hardest one I’ve written when it comes to banter. I wrote and rewrote a lot of scenes, and I was still changing big chunks of dialogue late in the editing process. Sometimes the dialogue and chemistry come very naturally, and sometimes you have to sit down and rewrite that back-and-forth over and over again until you think it’s hitting. I also really rely on my friends who read the earliest versions of my drafts to tell me when something isn’t working. My best friend actually reads while I’m on the phone with her, and if she gets to a part where I’m expecting her to have a big reaction and she doesn’t, I know I need to rewrite it!
Is there a scene you are most excited for readers to react to?
Definitely, but it’s a spoiler haha! So in second place, I’ll say one of my favorite scenes is very early in the book, when Blair and Jamie first discover what’s happened and that they’re going to be living together. I love that scene so much, and I think it’s probably one of the funniest in the book. I really enjoy a low-stakes physical altercation in a romance—I’m a little freak like that. And there’s something about physically fighting over something (in a way where we aren’t actually hurting each other!) that’s very fun to me.
What’s up next? Can you share any teasers about what you are currently working on?
I don’t think I can share too much, but I can say that as I’m writing this, I am about two and a half weeks out from turning in the first draft of my next YA romance! Yay!! I won’t give away too much, but I will say it’s my spin on an Elle Woods type and what might be the most chaotic, out of control, never-let-‘em’-know-your-next-move love interest I’ve ever written. They’ve been a ton of fun, and I’m so excited to start talking about them!
About The Roommate Arrangement
Release Date: January 27, 2026
Find it: Goodreads, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Amazon
When Blair accidentally becomes college roommates with her brother’s best friend, sparks fly in this hilarious rom-com from bestselling author Samantha Markum, perfect for fans of Lynn Painter and Emma Lord.
Blair might be a little type-A, but she never thought of herself as completely overbearing . . . that is, until her two best friends drop her from their housing arrangement a week before her pre-college summer coding program is about to start.
Blair knows if she switches to an on-campus dorm, her parents will make her give up her expensive sculpture class with her dream mentor in order to pay for it. Desperate, she agrees to be the fifth roommate to four off-campus sophomores who are also in a last-minute bind. But things get complicated when one of her new roommates turns out to be her brother’s best friend, Jamie Atwater.
Blair begs Jamie not to tell her brother about the new living arrangement. Her brother would go straight to their parents, who would definitely not approve, and all her plans would fall apart. So they strike a deal: she’ll help him finish coding the app he’s building if he promises to keep her secret.
Spending more time together shouldn’t be a problem. Sure, Jamie has a new haircut, a mysterious tattoo, and a year’s worth of earned muscle, but it’s not like Blair is noticing. After all, they’re only roommates, right?
About Samantha Markum
WEBSITE | GOODREADS | INSTAGRAM | THREADS | TWITTER| TIKTOK
Samantha Markum was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, where she got her great literary start writing Newsies fan fiction in middle school. When she’s not writing, she can be found playing cozy video games, attempting to revive her half-dead house plants, and getting in bed before sunset. When she is writing, you can find her staring at the wall in search of inspiration.
She is the USA Today bestselling author of Love, Off the Record, This May End Badly, and You Wouldn’t Dare.
