Title: Flat-Out Love
Author: Jessica Park
Date Published: 4/11/2011
Synopsis:
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.
Flat-Out Love comes complete with emails, Facebook status updates, and instant messages
My Rating:
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My Review:
How completely original. I absolutely adored this story. It's so unique and one of the first books I have read that actually incorporates the social media craze.
Julie is such a sweet, go with the flow type. Does she notice things in the Watkins family that are slightly more odd than a typical family? Yes, definitely! Does she try her hardest to figure out the big secret? Yes, she does. But does she decide to just play along in the meantime? Oh yea. I love that about her. She is curious as heck, but she knows to tread lightly, there is something major going on.
Finn, oh Finn. Loved him! Loved the Facebook Messages and Statuses! Matt and his geekiness was even something that had me hooked.
I just couldn't find anything wrong with this book.
A great heartwarming read with one heck of a romance, even if it is online!
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1 Comments
Flat Out Love is not like just any book. Ms. Park takes you through many emotions. At the beginning of the story, you are worried for Julie and her situation. Then you're relieved. But wait, it's just begun. What Ms. Park does in her book is introduce you to a dysfunctional world with the Watkins family. You have the parents, who are hardly ever home. You have Matt, a genius who doesn't seem to have much of a life. You have Celeste, who really pulls at your heartstrings, making you want to fix her and tell her everything will be okay. Then there's Finn, the first born of the family who lives life to the hilt. He's always off on an adventure. Julie experiences all of this when she is invited to stay in their home.
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