Flat-Out Love

Book Rating: 5 out of 5

Favorite Quote: (The struggle of finding a good quote that doesn't give away anything...ah!) "Flat Finn, this Julie. Julie, this is Flat Finn."

Summary: 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.

Review: I loved this book! Why? The suspense! The mystery! The characters! Julie, is a fun-loving girl who falls in love with a broken family and makes it her mission to pick up the pieces. (Seriously, it's so cute how much she cares.) Along the way, she confronts some of her own struggles that change not only her life, but the lives of these people she has come to know....polarplunge. She also grows quite close to a particular someone(s)....;) Finn, because of his adventure and charm. Matt, for his kindness and brain. The best part? I really had no idea what the big secret was...(the reveal at the end completely shocked me!) I mean I knew SOMETHING was up, but not that.