Mini Reviews: Flat-Out Matt by Jessica Park and Burn Bright by Marianne de Pierres

Title: Flat-Out Matt
Author: Jessica Park
Date Published: March 25, 2013
Pages: 158 pages (kindle)
Buy: Amazon

So a few weeks ago I found out there was going to be a short novella that basically had a bunch of chapters from Matt’s point of view plus a bonus chapter.

I was so damn excited. I loved Flat-Out love and to find out one of my favorite books from last year had a novella was just (insert word here that justifies my feelings).

I must say though this isn’t what I expected from this novella. I was hoping that it would be light and funny. It wasn’t. It broke my heart a hundred times over.

I knew from Flat-Out Love that Matt didn’t have it easy. I just didn’t know how freaking unfair things were for him.

Seeing things happen from his pov was just heartbreaking. To learn how tough it was on him and how he never got his chance to grieve. To learn that his parents left him to deal with everything. It hurt. A lot.

I think despite this Park never portrays his parents as particularly bad which I can appreciate; she shows the family as what they are, dysfunctional.

I really do love Matt in this, not just as a character but as a narrator. These little chapters could have been easily messed up, he could have been a love sick character and could have annoyed the hell out of me but he didn’t. He was a person with tons of problems, he was confused.

All fans of Flat-Out Love need to read this. Like now.

Title: Burn Bright
Author: Marianne de Pierres
Series: Night Creatures #1
Publisher: Random House
Release Date: March 1, 2011
Pages: 316 pages (paperback)
Buy: Amazon

I am not sure I can do this book justice with words.
I found this book ages ago and put it aside on my shelf to read “later”. The later came 5 months later.

The world of Ixion is rather intoxicating. The whole book has this sensual feeling, I am not sure what words you can use to describe it, but I could feel it rubbing off on my skin and I became immersed in this world.

Honestly I have no idea why this is marked as a paranormal romance and as a dystopia. It is neither. Maybe it’s because those two genres happen to be rather popular.

I am absolutely sure not everyone will like this. Some people will get bored and give up others will not.  I was about to give up on this book as well but I read on and I started falling in love.

I am not sure when I will read the sequel but I do want to know what becomes of Ixion.

Flat-Out Love by Jessica Park

Title: Flat-Out Love

Author: Jessica Park

Date Published: April 11, 2011

Buy: Amazon

Goodreads Summary

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.

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.

Flat-Out Love comes complete with emails, Facebook status updates, and instant messages.

“Gut-wrenching, overpowering, crushing, fulfilling, complex, bring-you-to-your-knees love.” 

Okay so I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started this. I only read it because of Matt aka the nerdy brother. Yes that is pretty biased of me but you don’t come across a lot of nerdy guys these days. You mostly come across bad boys and such, so as soon as I saw the nerdy boy I had to read it.

I started this book hoping it would be a light fluffy read, would cheer me up because I was in a bad mood. More like a silly chic lit. I was off the mark by quite a bit.

This was a whole bundle of awesomeness tied in one. Everything about this book is awesome. I am confused about why the hell this is self-published. Books like these should be published without a question!

It’s always the good books that don’t get the appreciation they deserve. Oh well.

This is supposedly a chic lit and despite the fact that it has the chic litish feel to it, I think there is a whole lot more going on. This book isn’t about a girl meeting a boy and falling head over heels. This is more about a girl trying to figure out what happened to this family that messed them up so much. This is about a girl healing a broken family.

It’s so beautiful.

Julie as a character is really great, she is relateable. She is smart but she also cares about what she looks like. She is right in the middle like most of us; we cannot totally give up on thing. We cannot totally forget about what we look like in the same way we cannot completely become idiots.

“Mom, I have to go. I think this Matt character is here.”

“Are you sure it’s him?”

Julie peered into the car as the window lowered. “I see a maniacal-looking guy with brightly-colored candy in one hand, and he’s waving a sickle in the other. Oh! He’s beckoning me to the car. This must be my ride.”

She also has a great sense of humor. Her relationship with each of the family members is great. She tries to change Matt, to try to get him to open up a bit because she senses that despite how smart he is, no one can be as holed up as he is. She tries to fix Celeste as well because she notices the little things here and there but she doesn’t get the overall picture until later.

“You can look back now and see how you should have known, but you were focusing on the facts instead of the feeling.”

That quote basically describes the book for me and the book as a whole. I knew what was going to happen but I chose not to believe it. I didn’t want to. Who would want that?

I suppose this is what happens when you don’t listen to your gut. You get hurt. And that ending, it’s picture perfect. I wish we got to see the whole scene but we kind of know how it would play out so we have something to hold on to.

I don’t think anything I said could justify the beauty of this book. It’s something you’ll have to read yourself to figure out.

Waiting on Wednesday #7

“Waiting On” Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.

Title: Left Drowning
Author: Jessica Park
Publisher: Amazon Children Publishing
Release Date: July 16th, 2013

Goodreads Summary

What does it take to rise from life’s depths, swim against the current, and breathe?

Weighted down by the loss of her parents, Blythe McGuire struggles to keep her head above water as she trudges through her last year at Matthews College. Then a chance meeting sends Blythe crashing into something she doesn’t expect—an undeniable attraction to a dark-haired senior named Chris Shepherd, whose past may be even more complicated than her own. As their relationship deepens, Chris pulls Blythe out of the stupor she’s been in since the night a fire took half her family. She begins to heal, and even, haltingly, to love this guy who helps her find new paths to pleasure and self-discovery. But as Blythe moves into calmer waters, she realizes Chris is the one still strangled by his family’s traumatic history. As dark currents threaten to pull him under, Blythe may be the only person who can keep him from drowning.

My Thoughts: I am a huge fan of Jessica Park and when I first found out about this book I went crazy. I read the summary and well I wasn't sure I would like it but because I love Jessica Park so much I hope I enjoy this one as well.