My book - it's here!

I’m excited (and slightly terrified) to reveal the cover to my very first book, How to Stay Sane in a House Share. And to tell you that it’s now available for you to pre-order. 

I never expected my life to change as much as it did in the year I spent writing this.

It’s a book I wrote to try to alleviate the ‘lost’ and ‘stuck’ feeling that I have spent years grappling with and hear so many house sharers describe.

When I pitched the idea for a book on ‘how to house share better’ to my agent Megan, I was settled inside the home I shared with my boyfriend. Having graduated from house sharing, my book would be written retrospectively, I said. I’d reflect on all I'd learned. All the knowledge I wished I could have imparted to my younger, house-sharing self, I'd package up for others in a book: How to Stay Sane in A House Share.

But by the time I was writing my first chapter, I was trawling Spare Room and spending my evenings rocking up at countless housemate interviews across London. I’d broken up with my boyfriend and soon I’d be back on the front line, writing a book about house sharing from inside a house share.

My need to know how to house share better was suddenly urgent and very, very real.

The book, as a result, is more personal than I could have imagined. Conversations I was having with house sharers for research – the ones that are woven into my book – suddenly took on deeper meaning.

We’d speak about how lost they can make you feel as temporary contracts expire and housemates rotate around you. We bonded over how furious they can make you – to wake up to beard hair clogging up the bathroom sink or to have to deep-clean oven dishes because one housemate never learned how to wash up properly. (I’d always bring up the one housemate I lived with would wash his clothes without any detergent.)

If they were at sea, so was I. I was with them, floundering in the choppy waters that is house sharing. When we chatted, conversation flowed and, often, wouldn’t stop.

Ever-increasing house prices mean that many millennials are house sharing for longer than previous generations. And yet, house shares and housemate relationships aren’t given the weight they deserve.

Bookshelves are full of self-help books to help people find romantic love; I frequently see TikTok therapists unpacking the psychology of friendship. Where is the advice on what to do when you can’t sleep because your housemate is having loud, giggly sex until 3am on a work night? Or how to settle a disagreement over the division of a freezer drawer with someone you only met ten minutes ago?  

The women I interviewed for my book will never know how much they steadied me and propelled me forwards – not only to keep writing and create something useful for the house sharers who would follow us, but to find happiness and connection in a house share. 

I watched and listened to these house sharers, trying to contain their laughter as they remembered something ridiculous their housemate had done or the little idiosyncrasies of their house-share group. And I remembered how much fun house shares can be, how powerful a form of connection they are.

So, one by one I looked closely at my hang-ups about house-sharing. I interrogated the history of house sharing and looked at the root causes of the societal pressure that I feel weighing so heavily on me. Understanding that helped.

Then I asked… 

How can I navigate the thousands of listings on Spare Room to find a good housemate? 

How can I make sure we strike the right level of connection, so I can feel at home in a house share? 

If we become friends, how can I maintain that?

How will I make the space feel like home? 

Can I be brave enough to face up to conflicts? 

How can I make sure I’m looking after my mental health in what feels like a very temporary and precarious living situation? 

What will it be like when I started dating again? 

These are the questions my book answers. Alongside stories from inside my own house shares, I interviewed more than 30 women about theirs. Their stories and lessons are in there, too.

Then I put our collective experiences to the best experts and psychologists I knew from 10 years as a health journalist. Seeing how visibly surprised these experts were by what was unfolding inside house shares was validating.

I explained the awkward dances housemates have to do when living side by side with near-strangers. How you find yourself recognising the scent of their washing powder, able to identify if a stray sock is theirs, but still have no idea what their day job is. How, after three weeks of knowing each other, you have to find a way to break it to them that using 15 teaspoons a day and leaving them on the side – a habit they’ve been happily repeating for the last 30 years – is actually very irritating.

I’d listen intently to their advice on how to navigate it – and then I’d try it out in my new home. Their advice is woven through the chapters of this book.

After 10 years (and counting) of house sharing, eight house shares and 18 housemates, this is what I know to be true: when you know how, it is possible to live happily and harmoniously in a house share – and to find connection and companionship there. In fact, to find a place that feels like home. 

I hope that this book guides others to make the same wonderful discovery for themselves.

You can now pre-order the book from various booksellers by clicking on the image below.