Steamy Lit in the Miami Springs area was the ultimate place to host a Julie Murphy talk for her first book in the rom-com trilogy, Student Union.
In typical Julie Murphy fashion, Student Union will make you cackle, swoon, and yearn all at the same time! The book follows Clover Rowan Walsh, who gets thrown into a college romance of convenience when her housing grant fizzles and she finds a dorm where a married couple can live together for the price of one. The messiness of college life begins where Clover also meets a hilarious group of friends, along with someone operating a grilled cheese business from their own dorm!
Julie Murphy was in conversation with the content creator from Miami, Flavia from @flaviareads. One of the great things about going to this event was that Julie Murphy, the author, is just as hilarious and filled with witty banter as her books are! But the best thing about Julie Murphy is that her books celebrate women of all shapes and sizes thriving through life. At the event, the readers felt the emotion throughout the room and understood how much her books strongly resonated with them. Steamy Lit held a night infused with pure girlhood, free-flowing red wine, and sex jokes galore!
Book Review:
Student Union by Julie Murphy introduces a delightfully absurd yet deeply heartfelt premise that romance lovers will easily devour. The story follows Clover Rowan Walsh, a fiercely driven college freshman whose housing grant suddenly falls through, forcing her to utilize an obscure university loophole: entering a marriage of convenience to secure affordable married student housing. To pull this off, she proposes to Bennett Andrew Graves, the wealthy heir to a coffee empire, her childhood best friend, and the very boy who completely broke her heart years prior. This delightful book masterfully weaves together popular romance tropes, combining a forced-proximity marriage of convenience with a high-heat, second-chance childhood friends-to-lovers story.
What starts as a strictly transactional arrangement packaged in a tiny, one-bed dorm room quickly evolves into a high-heat, forced-proximity whirlwind as old wounds reopen and undeniable chemistry sparks a genuine second-chance romance. Murphy masterfully balances high-dose spice and witty, snarky campus bicker-banter with an incredibly empowering, refreshing plus-size representation that emphasizes body positivity and confidence. While the underlying setup stretches the boundaries of realism, the raw emotional growth, the "he falls first" protective yearning, and the sheer charm of the flawed characters make this series-starter an unputdownable, cozy, and highly entertaining read.
