michelel72 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
michelel72) wrote2021-11-24 09:31 am
michelel72) wrote2021-11-24 09:31 am
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Book: "The Flatshare", Beth O'Leary
I heard about this book from a review by skygiants and it sounded like a surprisingly close fit to my current tastes. (Genre-guaranteed happy ending! Nice people figuring out how to be nice to each other!) My library had a physical copy on the shelf, so I checked it out. I wasn't sure when I'd actually read it -- I've been trying to poke along some of my own writing, and competing narratives often tank such efforts -- but yesterday my laptop died. So I ... read a book in a fit of pique. What is my brain.
Anyway: I really liked it! That review by skygiants does a far better job than I ever could of explaining the book, so please consider that post incorporated by reference here.
For the bits that are my own personal take:
I was worried for a while because the narrative and characters were just not clicking for me. I'm all about the medias res, but I think this particular book might start a little too late, in a way. We meet Tiffy when she's just starting to swing down from peak break-up grief; I'm happy not to dwell on the toxic relationship, but I had a hard time connecting with her when I was asked to take her emotional state on faith. Starting her story with the night she resolved to get out for good would have been more typical, if not nearly as light-hearted, and might have gotten me on her team earlier. It didn't help (me) that she's a "go out drinking! slam drinks to get drunk!" type (which is simply a not-for-me thing). Leon's entries amused me more, but he was also hard to connect to; that pretty much is his character, but it still made for a bumpy reading experience.
Quirk that doesn't personally land can grate. I thought about just quitting, but it usually takes a lot for me to give up on a narrative, and it isn't that long a book, so I stuck with it.
I think it was about when Tiffy first speaks to Richie that I finally started to get it. The back-and-forth note exchanges really make the book, and once I was in, I was fully in. Stakes got higher and the obstacles made sense.
And, seemingly as a personal gift to me, almost no sex on the page! Foreplay and then cut to black! I'm aro/ace; I enjoy romantic shenanigans but find explicit sex deeply tedious to have to skim past. No skimming needed here!
Anyway: Slow start for me, but ultimately highly enjoyable. Recommended.
Anyway: I really liked it! That review by skygiants does a far better job than I ever could of explaining the book, so please consider that post incorporated by reference here.
For the bits that are my own personal take:
I was worried for a while because the narrative and characters were just not clicking for me. I'm all about the medias res, but I think this particular book might start a little too late, in a way. We meet Tiffy when she's just starting to swing down from peak break-up grief; I'm happy not to dwell on the toxic relationship, but I had a hard time connecting with her when I was asked to take her emotional state on faith. Starting her story with the night she resolved to get out for good would have been more typical, if not nearly as light-hearted, and might have gotten me on her team earlier. It didn't help (me) that she's a "go out drinking! slam drinks to get drunk!" type (which is simply a not-for-me thing). Leon's entries amused me more, but he was also hard to connect to; that pretty much is his character, but it still made for a bumpy reading experience.
Quirk that doesn't personally land can grate. I thought about just quitting, but it usually takes a lot for me to give up on a narrative, and it isn't that long a book, so I stuck with it.
I think it was about when Tiffy first speaks to Richie that I finally started to get it. The back-and-forth note exchanges really make the book, and once I was in, I was fully in. Stakes got higher and the obstacles made sense.
And, seemingly as a personal gift to me, almost no sex on the page! Foreplay and then cut to black! I'm aro/ace; I enjoy romantic shenanigans but find explicit sex deeply tedious to have to skim past. No skimming needed here!
Anyway: Slow start for me, but ultimately highly enjoyable. Recommended.