Book Review: Flat Out Love by Jessica Park

Title: Flat Out Love by Jessica Park
Series: Stand-Alone
Finished on: March 11, 2013
Released: April 11, 2011
Rating: 5 out of 5
Source: Kindle E-Book

Summary from Goodreads:

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.

Warning: This is one of those annoying, fangirl-ish posts. Proceed at your own risk. I can't even guarantee any helpful information. Just gushing.

LOVE.LOVE.LOVE.LOVE. Jellicoe Road was my favorite book so far this year but Flat Out Love comes in a very close second. I wish I would have read this book so much sooner. I'm head over heels. This is one of those books that is so fantastic that it ruins all other books that come after for a long time.

This is such a character-driven story and the characters are just... I can't even come up with one word for them. Hilarious, quirky, adorable. I found myself laughing out loud so much at these characters and their interactions with each other. Flat Finn <3 omgosh best character EVER! And can I please be best friends with Julie. And can I please have Matt for myself. And can Celeste please be my little sister! This was such a awesome love story, beautifully written with fantastic dialogue. A story that will mess with your heart so much but in such a wonderful way.

No seriously, I already want to read this book again! This is such an addicting story but it's such an awesome addiction. If college-aged contemporaries are your thing: read Flat Out Love now. Skip everything else you had planned and read this one. This book was so much more than I was expecting and I'm totally charmed. These characters and their story will be in my heart for a very, very long time. It's been too long since I've really connected with a book like this and I'm so happy to have a new addition to my all-time favorites.

And I saw on the author's Facebook page that she's writing a follow-up from Matt's POV. I DIE!! <3

Anyway, I know this was such a crap review and probably helped no one in the slightest and probably shouldn't even be called a review, but I had to share this love with everyone anyway. Please forgive me.