Nenia Campbell's Reviews > Make Room for Love

You know that feeling when you're just trying to club a little to get over breaking up with your emotionally abusive ex and then he shows up to give you a hard time but you're saved by a hot, tall butch with abs for days and shoulders like a linebacker? Yeah, me either. But that's how MAKE ROOM FOR LOVE begins, with Mira and Isabel meeting at a popular bar in New York City. When Isabel finds out that Isabel has nowhere else to go, she offers her own apartment up for rent.

This is a sapphic friends to lovers romance with trans rep. Isabel is a Chinese-American woman who works as an electrician and struggles with her grief of the death of her older sister, Alexa, the one she could tell everything to. Mira is a Jewish-Indian woman working as a professor at a prestigious university where she teaches Latin. She's currently trying to unionize, along with her fellow grad students, to get fair wages and better working conditions. She's also still traumatized from her bad relationship and struggling with a sense of inadequacy.

This isn't quite a romcom but it's not quite cozy either because there are weighty emotional stakes. I related to Mira so deeply, because her negative self-talk really resonated with me. I also related to Isabel, who felt like she had to step up when one of her family members died, to the point that she went numb as a means of survival and never got the chance to fully grieve. Isabel's desire to please and Mira's gradual bisexual awakening were so well done, and I loved how natural the progression of their relationship moved from platonic friends to obsessed lovers. It was so sweet and so loving.

4 stars