Guest Review- Flat-Out Love by Jessica Park

  Flat-Out Love by Jessica Park

Flat-Out Love was one of those books that was on my “to be read” list for months.  I expected just your usual romance story and I didn’t get the feeling that I needed to read it immediately but I was WRONG!!  Now don’t get me wrong, this is very much a romance but with a twist, a touch of mystery and a lot of humor in it.  I feel like the average girl would not have coped as well as the female character did being forced to live with complete strangers that obviously had an unusual household.  Then, on top of that she starts to fall for the oldest son who she has never met!   When I first read the description, I was thinking how could a girl fall in love with a boy she has never met but it only took a few chapters of reading the character’s chats for me to also fall in love!    

Throughout the book you get to read the email and facebook correspondence between main characters.  With facebook being a huge part of today’s world I found it to be very entertaining.  I know I am enjoying a book when my husband asks me what I am smiling about as I read and I did my fair share of smiling and laughing throughout this book!  My favorite facebook post was, “I put my pants on one leg at a time, just like everyone else.  It’s the way I take them off that makes me better than you.”  Now who wouldn’t fall in love with someone that posts sayings like that…just kidding!! I find things like that funny and maybe that is what made me love this book so much! 

     Now on a sadder note, the family dynamics in this book is disheartening.   The struggles going on in this family made my heart heavy.  I had a hard time trying to understand how parents can neglect their children in the way these parents did.   I understand that every family has skeletons in the closet but these parents needed to step up to the plate and start parenting.  The idea that a college age guy primarily takes care of his younger sister who has serious issues made me ANGRY!  He was an amazing guy that should have been able to enjoy his college life and not be responsible for his sister!  He was smart, cute (but a little nerdy) and SOOOO sweet.

     As you can see, this book will take you on a roller coaster ride of emotions. I would go from laughing one minute to wanting to SLAP the mom the next! I am not going to go into much more detail because I would not want to ruin it for anyone but this was the first book that really SHOCKED me towards the end!   My recommendation is read it if you have not. You can’t go wrong with romance, mystery and humor all in one but that’s just my opinion.

Thanks to Jessica Park for writing an amazing book that touched my heart in many ways!    

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Product Description

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.

It's not what you know--or when you see--that matters. It's about a journey.

     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.

 Meet Our Guest Reviewer : Jennifer
I live in South Carolina and have lived here all my life...a true "Carolina girl."  I am a wife, mother of two awesome boys, full time nurse and currently in the process of going back to school to further my nursing degree.  When I am not doing all of the above, I LOVE to sit down with a good book to relax but that doesn't happen as often as I would like!