Overall Rating: 5 Stars, I’d give it 10 if I rated that high.
Brief Summary of the Storyline: Julie arrives in Boston for college but when her housing falls through she ends up staying with the family of her mom’s old college roommate. Upon moving in she feels something is not so quite right about the family. The parents, Erin and Roger are nice but complete workaholics. The oldest brother, Finn is always traveling and never comes home. The middle brother, Matt, who is about the same age as Julie, is an MIT tech geek who seems to clash a bit with Julie. But then there’s the youngest child, Celeste. She is 13 and a bit odd. She carries a life-size cardboard of her brother Finn. Julie grows quite close to the family, even to Finn via Facebook chats and emails but something still doesn’t seem quite right.
Overall Opinion: The short answer, I absolutely loved this book. Words can’t describe how much I enjoyed this. I was looking for something that would take me on an emotional roller coaster and this was it. I did catch the plot twist within the first few chapters but I just had to see where the story went. I want to post all the things I loved but that would completely spoil the book. I will add this to my “read again” list.
The long answer, it bares repeating, I absolutely loved this book. Even though there was the big secret, plot-twist, looming over the family Julie seemed to fit right in. I think she helped fill the void in the family and helped them deal. She became an instant sister to Matt and Celeste and pretty quickly went into a flirty relationship with Finn. I hated that I was able to guess the plot twist so quickly. I’m not sure the author meant for that to happen. I don’t think she counted on a person like me that comes to the start of the book looking to catch the twist. But I did. It didn’t even spoil the book for me. I needed to see how it was going to come out. And man when it did; the floodgates started.
POV: Just Julie
Overall Pace of Story: A quick moving page-turner.
Instalove: No.
H rating: 5 I simply loved Matt.
h rating: 4 She get’s one less star for being in the situation in the first place. See major issue below.
Worthy to Remember: The whole damn book. Well, first there’s laying under the Christmas tree. All the emails and texts. The t-shirts left behind and the funny t-shirts worn. When Julie was stuck in the elevator.
Major Issues: 1. The way the parents just checked out of the family. Well, it seemed that way. They were always too busy with work and it left Matt to raise Celeste by himself, then afterward Julie started to help raise Celeste. Poor kids. 2. The way Julie was so adamant about ‘fixing’ the family’s issues. I almost wanted to shout, “worry about yourself, girl.”
Just because it just bothered me: I never understand people who go online and find apartments or roommates without even visiting the place first. I get it you live in Ohio and now are moving to Boston. You didn’t visit the place before you moved. Also, why invite someone to stay in your house when you have a big major secret that you are keeping.
Sadness level: Oh I am welling up just thinking about the issues of this family.
Descriptive sex: Not a single bit of it and I didn’t care one bit.
Closure: The book is wrapped up but there are still some questions that could be answered. So I’d say yes even though you need to read Flat-Out Matt, the next book, to get those tiny tidbits. I wouldn’t call it a cliff-hanger but I did pick up Flat-Out Matt Immediately after reading this.
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