Flat-Out Love by Jessica Park

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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.

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This book is hard to describe and review. I can honestly say I have never read anything like it before. This book, this story is so remarkable I am at a loss of words. It is a refreshing approach to NA novels. A successful, original approach that left me a flabbergasted mess.

If you are looking for steamy and explicit scenes, the usual angsty-ridden characters and lots of back and forth, this is not for you.

But if you want a story that is unique and original, with incredibly awesome and brilliant characters whose personalities shine and sparkle, if you want a story that will move you to the core and forever own a piece of your heart, than you should read “Flat-Out Love”. I am absolutely in awe and can’t stop thinking or talking about this story. I am in love with the characters and I am in love with all the emotions this book evokes.

The story follows Julie’s first semester in college, where she ends up living with family friends after her accommodation opportunities fall through. There she is faced with a family full of unique characters that have a multitude of weird quirks. From the 13 year old Celeste carrying a life-sized cut-out of her absent brother Finn, to MIT junior Matt who is a walking encyclopaedia of geek knowledge and has taken on the role of a parent for his sister Celeste, to the real parents Erin and Roger who can’t be out of the house often enough.
Fairly quickly Julie realizes that a lot of those quirks seem to be rooted in secrets – secrets about something painful and traumatic. Since no one opens up, she subtly tries to coax the family member into allowing themselves to be part of the real world again. She does that without any judgement, just wanting to see real happiness on their faces. Especially Celeste and Matt seem to need her the most. She quickly wins the hearts of everyone in the family – even Finn, the travelling brother whom she starts chatting with and slowly but surely falls for him.

But nothing is as it seems in this family and when lies and secrets come to light and the family faces their biggest demons, will they be able to fight them and come out stronger or will it break everyone in the process?

It is absolutely amazing how Jessica Park manages to write with so much emotion and melancholy, yet funny and comical at the same time. While reading, it was obvious there is so much sadness and heart-ache and yet the characters and their banter made me smile. It is a story that breaks and warms your heart simultaneously. The sadness and trauma are subtle and yet always there, always tangible. And when truths come to light, it broke my heart. I was sitting in the car waiting to pick up my mother from work and had tears streaming down my face. But despite all the sadness, in the end we find happiness together with the characters. The characters who fairly quickly will become your best friends, your family.

Julie, a witty, strong, loyal and caring girl that has her own heart-ache to carry but puts other first. A girl I could be best friends with in an instant.

Matt, a wonderfully sweet and caring geek, whose nerdy character is incredibly lovable. He is too smart for his own good and willing to sacrifice everything for the ones he loves. One of the greatest book-boyfriends ever. I have quite the crush on him.

And Celeste, well, there aren’t words to give her awesomeness justice. A troubled and traumatized girl, she is still incredibly strong, smart and witty. I love her to pieces

Seriously, go meet those characters. You won’t regret it. You’ll be in love forever – in flat-out love.

5+ melancholic, sad-yet-happy, awed-by-Jessica-Parks-talent chicks.

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