

This should have been posted in April… Sorry. This Sample Sunday is a week or so late… Click to link to Sample I was provided a review copy this did not influence my opinion of the book. Whether you were charmed by Celeste in Flat-Out Love or are meeting her for the first time, this book is a joyous celebration of differences, about battling private wars that rage in our heads and in our hearts, and - very much so - this is a story about first love.


And together they may also save another couple - two people Celeste knows are absolutely, positively flat-out in love. To rescue her - that is, if she'll let him. Justin Milano, a college sophomore with his own set of quirks, could be that person to pull her from a world of solitude. If she can just find that one person to throw her a lifeline, then maybe, just maybe. But college could set her free, right? If she can make it through this grueling senior year, then maybe. Alienated because she's too smart, her speech too affected, her social skills too far outside the norm, she seems to have no choice but to retreat into isolation. 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.For high-school senior Celeste Watkins, every day is a brutal test of bravery. To Julie, the emotionally scrambled members of the Watkins family add up to something that … well … doesn’t quite add up. 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. That’s because Finn is traveling the world and surfacing only for random Facebook chats, e-mails, and status updates.

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.Īnd there’s that oldest brother, Finn: funny, gorgeous, smart, sensitive, almost emotionally available. The middle child, Matt, is an MIT tech geek with a sweet side … and the social skills of a spool of USB cable. The parents, Erin and Roger, are welcoming, but emotionally distant and academically driven to eccentric extremes. When Julie’s off-campus housing falls through, her mother’s old college roommate, Erin Watkins, invites her to move in. 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. Something is seriously off in the Watkins home. 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.
