“Being nice is a good thing. You can be strong and nice. You don’t have to be one or the other.”
Beth O’Leary’s 2019 romance book The Flatshare is the story of Tiffy Moore and Leon Twomey. Tiffy needs a cheap flat. Leon needs more income. Together, they come up with the perfect solution: Leon will have the rule of his one-bedroom apartment during the day when Tiffy is at work, and Tiffy occupies it during his night shifts. The pair share a flat and a bed but still haven’t actually met each other. But with obsessive exes, demanding clients at work and wrongly imprisoned brothers, this unorthodox arrangement is about to be made even more complicated. If you loved Tiffy and Leon’s story, join us at What We Reading for the best books like The Flatshare! These reads all feature slow-burning romances, enemies-to-lovers tropes, forced proximity and plenty of banter along the way!
You Deserve Each Other (You Deserve Each Other #1) – Sarah Hogle
First up on our list of books like The Flatshare is Sarah Hogle’s contemporary romance series, You Deserve Each Other. Naomi Westfield has the perfect fiance: Nicholas Rose holds doors open for her, remembers her restaurant order and comes from the sort of affluence every bride wants to be a part of. They never fight but, with just three months until the wedding, realise they have both been feigning their commitments and are sick of each other.
With neither of them wanting to foot the bill for ending the engagement, Naomi and Nicolas begin a war of pranks and sabotage. However, as the days to the wedding that may or may not happen continue to trickle down, Naomi slowly feels her resolve slipping. Now with nothing to lose, they can finally enjoy being themselves again with the last person they would have expected: each other.
Uncoupling – Lorraine Brown
Another contemporary romance similar to The Flatshare comes from Lorraine Brown in her 2021 book, Uncoupling. Hannah and Si are happily in love and on their way to their wedding together. That is until their train separates on the way. Suddenly, Hannah wakes up in Paris and realises that her boyfriend (and ticket) are three hundred miles away in Amsterdam.
But then Leo on the station platform, who is everything Si isn’t. Spending a day with him in Paris soon leads to Hannah questioning everything she thought she knew about herself. Before long, she begins to wonder whether sometimes it’s worth taking a wrong turn to find everything you’ve been looking for.
The Bride Test (The Kiss Quotient #2) – Helen Hoang
Khai Diep has no feelings. Incapable of feeling the big things like love and grief, he’s convinced he’s defective, but his family know him better than that – his autism just ensures he processes emotions differently from others. His mother takes matters into her own hands and returns to Vietnam to find him the perfect bride.
As a mixed-race girl living in the backstreets of Ho Chi Minh City, Esme Tran has always felt out of place. So when an opportunity to travel to America and meet a potential husband springs up, she happily jumps at it. But seducing Khai proves to be harder than she first thought. Esme’s lessons in love appear to be working, but only on herself. With her time in the States dwindling and her feelings for Khai only growing further, he is forced to understand that there is more than one way to love. Like The Flatshare, Helen Hoang’s The Bride Test is a forced-proximity romance book that was nominated for the 2019 Goodreads Choice Awards.
The Split – Laura Kay
Having been betrayed and wounded by her ex-girlfriend, Ally sets off to her dad’s home in Sheffield with the one thing that might make Emily speak to her again: her cat, Malcolm.
Back home, her parents force her back into the dating game. Along with her friend Jeremy, Ally conjures up a plan to revenge-run a half-marathon to win back their exes. The only issue? Neither Ally nor Jeremy have any experience with running. They enlist the help of the athletic and beautiful Jo, but will she ensure their ridiculous plan pays off, or have them running for the hills? Laura Kay’s The Split is a contemporary queer romance book that is perfect for fans of The Flatshare looking for another story filled with warmth, humour and proper rom-com vibes.
Love, Theoretically – Ali Hazelwood
The many lives of Elsie Hannaway have finally caught up with her. By day, she’s a professor toiling away at grading labs and teaching thermodynamics. By other day, she makes up for her lack of a paycheck by offering her services and skills as a people-pleaser with her fake girlfriend experience. It’s a smooth operation, until Jack Smith, the attractive and broody older brother of her favourite turns out to be the cold-blooded physicist who ruined her mentor’s career.
And that same Jack Smith is revealed to be sitting on the hiring committee at MIT, in between Elsie and the job of her dreams. She’s prepared for an all-out war of scholarly sabotage, but finally being able to be herself around the experimentalist may also prompt her to put some of her most trusted theories on love into practice.
The Hating Game – Sally Thorne
One of the best enemies-to-lovers books like The Flatshare, Sally Thorne’s bestselling The Hating Game introduces readers to Lucy Hutton and Joshua Templeman. The two of them hate each other. They are both executive assistants to co-CEOs of a publishing company and regularly engage in overly passive-aggressive rituals. He can’t stand her bright clothes and overly cheery attitude, and she can’t understand his uptight and meticulous approach to his work.
The pair of them are put up for the same promotion, escalating their battle of wills to new heights. Lucy refuses to back down, even if their latest game could cost her dream job. But, the tension between them soon leads to them discovering that perhaps they don’t hate each other after all. Or maybe it’s just another part of their game.
Well Met (Well Met #1) – Jen DeLuca
For another book similar to The Flatshare that uses an enemies-to-lovers and forced proximity formula, Jen DeLuca’s Well Met series is a great go-to! When Emily moved to the small town of Willow Creek in Maryland to help with her sister’s recovery from an accident, she never would have expected to be roped into volunteering with the town’s Rennaisance Faire. Or that the insufferable teacher in charge of the volunteers would dominate her thoughts so much.
The faire has been a part of Simon’s family legacy for generations, and he makes it clear from the get-go that he has no time for her lighthearted approach or array of ideas for new acts. Yet, when he’s on the faire grounds and presented with Emily’s wench outfit, he becomes a different person. Her stop in Willow Creek was just meant to be a pit stop for the summer, but Emily soon begins to question whether developing something serious with Simon and finding a permanent home for herself may be more than a fantasy.
The Unhoneymooners (Unhoneymooners #1) – Christina Lauren
Finally, no list of the best books like The Flatshare would be complete without mentioning The Unhoneymooners. Ahead of her sister’s wedding, Olive is forced to spend the day with her sworn enemy, Ethan, who just so happens to be the groom’s best man. However, when food poisoning runs rampant across the wedding party, everyone is hit by it except for the pair of them. Suddenly, an all-expenses-paid honeymoon in Hawaii is up for grabs.
Olive and Ethan decide to put their loathing for each other aside for the sake of a free holiday. But when Olive runs into her boss, her little white lie spirals out of control. She and Ethan are forced to front as happy newlyweds, madly in love on their honeymoon. But, instead of feeling like the unluckiest woman in the world again, she soon realises that she is enjoying playing pretend.
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
