Review and Giveaway (CLOSED): Flat-Out Love by Jessica Parker

Flat-Out Love by Jessica Park

Paperback: 400 pages

Release date: April 11th, 2011

Publisher: Createspace

Source: Author

Amazon ││The Book Depository ││ Smashwords

Goodreads 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. 

This book deserves a whopping 5 stars. It has everything I want in a contemporary book and I am so glad I had the chance to read it. After discovering so many great indie books, Flat-Out Love especially caught my attention with its stunning cover and intriguing premise. I almost begged my mom to send it off to me in Baguio when the book arrived and picked it up as soon as I could. Well, I enjoyed and loved it so much it exceeded my expectations. I couldn’t put it down and when I had to, it was all I think about and I was so itchy to get back reading. I finished this two weeks ago and I admit that I had a hard time composing my thoughts, for the same reason that I still haven’t written a real review of On the Jellicoe Road. It has completely changed my view about self-published books. And I’m also starting to like YA stories with older characters. 

For one, Flat-Out Love was exactly what I needed the time I was reading it; light, fun, witty, moving, and very relaxing. It was a warmly compelling story that brought out the geek in me and made me forget about my real-life problems. Brace yourselves for laugh out loud moments that could shift into a serious and emotional one. It is not the usual kind of story that is serious, but it sure has a mystery I was very anxious to unfold. Largely part of the story deals with family issues and dysfunction mixed with romance, and Jessica Park’s absolute brilliance made it work. And speaking of romance, the one in this book is astounding. It was slowly built and pretty much involved the use of Facebook and email. The chats and statuses were absolutely fun to read. It would be so cool and exciting to at least have Julia, Matt, Finn and Celeste as a Facebook friend. 

Speaking of those four, I loved every single character in this book. They were so well thought out I couldn’t help but feel like they’re real people. They all have their peculiarity and quirks, which had me wanting them to become an actual living and breathing people. 

For me, this book is almost without a flaw. It’s one of those rare stories that I highly recommend everyone to read and enjoy. So I’m urging you to read this book and prepare to be flat-out inlove with it. 

Thank you so much to Jessica Park for providing me a copy of her book in exchange for an honest review. :)) 

Completely smitten!!

Because I loved it so much (and I’m sure you will too) I’m giving away an electronic copy of Flat-Out Love! Just leave a comment telling me your favorite Contemp book with your GFC name and email address. You can have +2 extra entries by sharing about the giveaway on Twitter/Facebook. :) Open internationally and ends two weeks from now.

The winner of an ecopy of Flat-Out Love is:

Melannie!!


Congrats! I will email you shortly and you'll have 72 hours to reply.