Flat-Out Love [Kindle Edition]

Jessica Park (Author)

Book 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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Flat-Out Love is the first book in a long, long time that has touched me this deeply."
Book & a Latte

"...This is The Best Book I Have Ever Read... I have read a lot of books but none like this one. It made me laugh until I nearly cried. It's funny, sad, romantic and just simply fantastic..."
--ComaCalm's Corner

"I loved it so much that I'm already considering how long to wait before re-reading it.The romance in this one is amazing because it's a slow building, feel-it-in-your-stomach kind of love."
--Book Labyrinth

"Within the first chapter, I laughed out loud no less than four times. The characters were well-rounded, and strong while still vulnerable...Flat Out Love is a shining example of romance in the internet age..."
--Random Musings

"It had me laughing, it had me crying, it made me feel emotions that I thought my black heart wouldn't allow."
--See K Read

This book was so outrageously good...It's at the top of my favorites. It has surpassed...dare I say it?...my deeply beloved Nicholas Sparks. Totally different type of books but I'm trying to prove a point here.
--Just Another Book Addict

From the Author

For the record, there's no "secret" ... I just want you to enjoy the ride.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• File Size: 561 KB
• Print Length: 402 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1461085977
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: Jessica Park (April 11, 2011)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B004W9BYR8
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #24,625 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

204 of 241 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Flat-Out Awesome July 20, 2011

By J. Meegan VINE™ VOICE

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Frankly, I am SHOCKED this author has not been snatched up by a major publishing house. I am even more shocked the reviews for this book are so few (but not at all surprised that almost every review was five star).

This ebook was fantastic with virtually zero flaws (even down to the grammar, spelling, punctuation). I loved the story and the characters and the author's creative use of technology as a way to further enhance the plot. It's been a loooooong time since I've read a YA book where I was as emotionally invested in the characters and the outcome as I was intellectually. The characters are incredibly three-dimensional and I was rooting for them from the get-go (especially Celeste and Matt). And how refreshing to find an author who presumes the intelligence of her readers and isn't afraid to challenge them with some truly excellent word play and smart humor.

Julie, the heroine, is wonderful and incredibly sympathetic....and, I felt, an awesome role model for young women readers. She's not perfect but she isn't afraid to take risks and admit her flaws. She grows tremendously during the story and it's a pleasure to see how much she matures from start to finish.

Like other reviewers, I am afraid to go into a lot of detail about the plot because I don't want to reveal too much. Suffice it to say it's very cleverly done and written in such a way that even if you begin to think you know what's going on, you still aren't 100% certain until a good chunk of the way in. And by that point, you are fully invested in all the characters and eager to see how things fall into place. I thought it was wonderful the way the author puts the reader in Julie's shoes so completely that when we get to the big reveal, our emotions are as complex and complicated as hers. BTW, this isn't just a tale of romance (but there's plenty of that), it's also a realistic portrait of a fractured family who are slowly, slowly emerging from a dark time and reconnecting with one another and themselves.

All I can say is even if this book doesn't sound like your cup of tea, give it a try. I suspect you will be more than pleasantly surprised.

46 of 62 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Average March 15, 2012

By Dorthabell

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Flat-out Love would suit a teenage reader. It is a simple story about a young girl homeless in a new city, when a family friend offers to take her in to live with her family. The family has a secret and some unusual behaviours that the main character must learn to live with. It was easy reading, a bit predictable and the secret became apparent fairly early on in the reading for me which took some of the fun out of the story.

51 of 69 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars ***MAJOR SPOILER! Don't read if you don't want to know the big revelation! November 13, 2011

By Confused at Work

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

You are warned, there are major spoilers here, so don't read if you like your suspense.

I haven't read every review before purchasing this book. I typically like knowing what happens in a story before buying it but did not do so with this book. I bought it because of the quirky dialogue in the sample and because I like love triangle plots. After reading the book, I'm going back to finding out spoilers before buying anything again. Like the reviewer who rated this book 1 star, I am also creeped out by the story. I've been debating whether to include a spoiler, but decided to do it in case there are some folks out there like me who prefer to know everything before buying the book.

***********WARNING! MAJOR SPOILER! DO NOT CONTINUE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS!!**********
Heroine starting college in a new city, found out she was swindled by a craigslist posting and has nowhere to live. Mom contacts an old college friend who sends her college son to pick her up. Heroine meets younger sister who has a cut-out full sized photo of their older brother who's abroad. Younger sis takes big bro's cut-out with her everywhere & talks to it like he's a real person - h finds this very disturbing. In fact, she finds the entire family a little bit strange. College son takes her apt-hunting but no luck. Mom's friend offers older brother's room to h in exchange for babysitting younger sister after school so college son can work as teacher's asst (or something like that). h friends elder brother on Facebook and they exchange lots of funny emails. h finds she is falling for big brother and he emails that he feels the same. College son is like a brother to h and she has lots of fun dialogue with him. Big bro sends a package to everyone and there's a necklace for h. Fast forward a couple of months later, h goes to a local artist store and finds a hair clip that big bro allegedly sent from abroad to little sis. This makes h suspicious. She goes home, finds old photo albums and notices that the photos older bro sent to her where digitally copied. College son comes home, h confronts him and she finds out older bro has been dead for several yrs, everyone pretends he's alive somewhere, college son admits he is actually Facebook older bro sending her emails and that everything he told her was true, that he was in love with h. She is obviously angry why she wasn't told this and later moves out after having talk with family mom who explains what happened. Fast forward 3 months later, family dad sees her during one of little sis' visits and notices h is wearing a gemstone pendant (something necklace), explains that it was college bro's prized possession & that h must mean so much to college bro for him to give it to her. She realizes she does love college son, tells him when she sees him that she felt it was him all along, which I personally didn't feel while reading the story.

The dialogue was very smart and funny, hence the 2 stars. Up until the reveal, I was enjoying the story, anticipating what would happen when big bro came home. I read somewhere that this was a love triangle so I couldn't wait to get to the part where college son reveals his feelings & would he fight big bro for her? But I was floored at the revelation...and seriously creeped out! My mind went back through everything happening in the story and can't help cringe & think that this family was seriously dysfunctional and morbid. I never felt that there was any attraction at all between college son & the heroine, I only felt it during the email exchanges between h & big bro. If it weren't for the witty dialogue, I'd have given this story 1 star for effort.

More About the Author

Jessica is the author of New York Times bestselling FLAT-OUT LOVE, RELATIVELY FAMOUS, and the upcoming NA novel, LEFT DROWNING (July 2013). She lives in New Hampshire where she spends an obscene amount time thinking about rocker boys and their guitars, complex caffeinated beverages, and tropical vacations. On the rare occasions that she is able to focus on other things, she writes.

Please visit her at jessicapark.me and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/authorjessicapark and Twitter @JessicaPark24