The Flatshare
By Beth O’Leary
Publication Year: 2019
Type: Fiction
Genre: romance
Read on 2019-06-24
View additional specs on this book in Muhan’s 2019 Reading Survey ➞
★★★☆☆
A pretty silly, totally not to be taken seriously, quirky caricature characters, very golden age Drew Barrymore/Julia Roberts romcom-esque story about two young attractive slightly ditzy people who arrange a flatshare sleeping in 1 bed at different hours so they never meet (until it’s time to bang, obviously). Chapters alternate between either character’s POV and are written differently according to their idiosyncratic communication styles. It was slow starting and I considered abandoning it before the abuse/gaslighting part of the story really got going like 35-40% of the way in. I appreciated the attempt here to show how someone can slowly emerge out of an abusive relationship, but I just didn’t think this part of the story was written convincingly. Like there really wasn’t a good enough reason for the friends not to have told her her ex was abusive after they’d already been broken up for many many months, like...did they really need to wait until she was having traumatic flashbacks to tell her to see a therapist.
There is a water weak B-plot about getting the guy’s brother out of wrongful imprisonment that I did not like. It didn’t have anything meaningful to say about the very real problem of incarceration, and instead just kind of used it as fodder to show us how nice and kind the main characters are. There is yet another B-plot (a C-plot?) about finding the long lost gay lover of an old man, that was ENTIRELY pointless and also just to give the main couple opportunities to get up to melodramatic fanficky shenanigans. She trips at one point because she’s #clumsy and he tends to her ankle and picks her up about 50 times. *BIG eye roll* because look I read some SAPPY SHIT in fanfic but just...try a little harder to justify your quirky romantic predicaments in the story. Just try.
In the end obviously everything ends well for everyone and we get a big fat bow on top of it all. It’s all fine. It’s fine. It could’ve been about 30% shorter and the characters could’ve acted about 82% more realistically. But really it’s fine. Good for you if you were able to enjoy it for what it was, because I just didn’t.
See me review this book in this video!
