Book Details
Author: Jessica Park
Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 508 KB
Print Length: 402 pages
Book Summary
Flat-Out Love is a warm and witty novel of family love and dysfunction, deep heartache and raw vulnerability, with a bit of mystery and one whopping, knock-you-to-your-knees romance.
Something is seriously off in the Watkins home. And Julie Seagle, college freshman, small-town Ohio transplant, and the newest resident of this Boston house, is determined to get to the bottom of it.
When Julie's off-campus housing falls through, her mother's old college roommate, Erin Watkins, invites her to move in. The parents, Erin and Roger, are welcoming, but emotionally distant and academically driven to eccentric extremes. The middle child, Matt, is an MIT tech geek with a sweet side ... and the social skills of a spool of USB cable. The youngest, Celeste, is a frighteningly bright but freakishly fastidious 13-year-old who hauls around a life-sized cardboard cutout of her oldest brother almost everywhere she goes.
And there's that oldest brother, Finn: funny, gorgeous, smart, sensitive, almost emotionally available. Geographically? Definitely unavailable. That's because Finn is traveling the world and surfacing only for random Facebook chats, e-mails, and status updates. Before long, through late-night exchanges of disembodied text, he begins to stir something tender and silly and maybe even a little bit sexy in Julie's suddenly lonesome soul.
To Julie, the emotionally scrambled members of the Watkins family add up to something that ... well ... doesn't quite add up. Not until she forces a buried secret to the surface, eliciting a dramatic confrontation that threatens to tear the fragile Watkins family apart, does she get her answer. (lifted from goodreads.com)
Something is seriously off in the Watkins home. And Julie Seagle, college freshman, small-town Ohio transplant, and the newest resident of this Boston house, is determined to get to the bottom of it.
When Julie's off-campus housing falls through, her mother's old college roommate, Erin Watkins, invites her to move in. The parents, Erin and Roger, are welcoming, but emotionally distant and academically driven to eccentric extremes. The middle child, Matt, is an MIT tech geek with a sweet side ... and the social skills of a spool of USB cable. The youngest, Celeste, is a frighteningly bright but freakishly fastidious 13-year-old who hauls around a life-sized cardboard cutout of her oldest brother almost everywhere she goes.
And there's that oldest brother, Finn: funny, gorgeous, smart, sensitive, almost emotionally available. Geographically? Definitely unavailable. That's because Finn is traveling the world and surfacing only for random Facebook chats, e-mails, and status updates. Before long, through late-night exchanges of disembodied text, he begins to stir something tender and silly and maybe even a little bit sexy in Julie's suddenly lonesome soul.
To Julie, the emotionally scrambled members of the Watkins family add up to something that ... well ... doesn't quite add up. Not until she forces a buried secret to the surface, eliciting a dramatic confrontation that threatens to tear the fragile Watkins family apart, does she get her answer. (lifted from goodreads.com)
Book Review
Rating: 5/5
Flat-Out Love is a surprising contemporary romance that will knock you off your feet. I can describe in a few words: the story revolves around a slow-building romance and what the author would lead you to believe is not what you think it is. Flat-Out Love is witty and filled with surprising twists and turns. The characters are lovable and complex. Amazing plot plus wonderful characters makes Flat-Out Love one of the most memorable books I have ever read.
The witty dialogues in this book just never cease – from the Facebook Statuses, emails to bantering between the characters – it made laugh the whole time. Yes, Facebook, Jessica Park utilized technology and the popularity of social media to enhance the plot which succeeded. I like Julie – she’s the type who likes to save everyone from their doom. She’s confident, relaxed, and intelligent. She had her own family problems but is capable of handling it first-hand. Julie had a great relationship with the Watkins family, whom she found herself living with after a disaster with Craiglist. I love her patience with Celeste, and her verbal intellectual intercourse with Matt.
There is an equal mix of drama, romance and humor in Flat-Out Love. This is not just an ordinary love story, but also an extraordinary realistic portrayal of a dysfunctional family who are gradually emerging from a dark era of their lives, opening up to one another and being a family once more. The end part of the book would take its readers to a surprising turn that will keep you glued reading to see how all of it will end.
Flat-Out Love is an amazing, amazing read. Even if you don’t like YA novels, you should give this a try and some of your time because I am sure you will be hooked.
Favorite Quotes
I’m sure Literature 101 can’t compete with, what? Adoration of Differential Equations?
And my personal favorite, Quantum Physics II: Romantic Entanglements of Energy and Matter
Julie Seagle thinks that Twitter is like Facebook’s slutty cousin. It does everything dumb and whore-ish you’re too responsible to do.
If you can’t stop thinking about someone’s update, that’s called a “status cling.”
“Then she did what any girl would do: she Googled him.”
“Normal people can become very annoying if put in annoying situations.”
“What happens when you get scared half to death twice?”
“I 'Facebook like' you, but I'm not IN 'Facebook like' with you.”
“Internet access came before pride. ”
“Nobody gets their period for the first time and has a nervous breakdown next to a Kohler toilet. Men have such stupid ideas about menstruation, don’t they, Julie?”
Thank you so, so much for this amazing review! I'm very happy that you like the book so much. :)
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