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frasersimons 's review for:
The Flatshare
by Beth O'Leary
4.5 rounded up
Honestly, I’d have never expected to give a contemporary romance 5 stars. But the thing of it is, whenever I’m feeling low I always watch a Meg Ryan movie—something like 3 people IRL know about me. I don’t particularly think I’m romantic, and I’m somewhere on the ace spectrum, so for a romance to work for me, which rarely happens, it pretty much has to work completely divested of sex, more-or-less.
But the best thing about good romance has always been Ephron-esk for me, in the sense that it has a fairy tale quality to it. But that alteration to reality is rooted in reality. These people are their best selves when with one another. And it’s sad that that feels like a fairy tale, perhaps, but life has enough challenges, especially when you’re trying to make a relationship work, and we deserve to have their trust rewarded.
What this book does so wonderfully is presenting problems to be surmounted that don’t romanticize incredibly toxic, sometimes abusive behaviours, and highlights important issues like emotional abuse and gaslighting and other fairly heavy topics, in a still overall wholesome way. There isn’t pain for pains sake. No physical violence when I was expecting it to go that way. It’s maybe one of the first books ever where it does fulfill the fairy tale aspects of belief in those around us where the lover interests struggle with personal issues that aren’t sensationalized.
I have friends like Tiffany as well, so this particularly hit home for me. It’s really understated how seriously warped a person can become from emotional abuse. Their perceptions of themselves and others, their memories, are all altered. It was handled, from what I can tell, really well.
Really, as long as you can get past the somewhat difficult conceit that gets the plot going, and the fact that it’s not concerned with being Literary, Which, was the largest hump I myself had as I read it (I’m a craft snob, I admit), I can’t imagine not warming to this. There’s so much heart and good natured faith in people, that it’s actually a bit inspiring, by proxy. Which, if that’s not the absolute best I can hope for from the genre, what else could I rate it, really?
Honestly, I’d have never expected to give a contemporary romance 5 stars. But the thing of it is, whenever I’m feeling low I always watch a Meg Ryan movie—something like 3 people IRL know about me. I don’t particularly think I’m romantic, and I’m somewhere on the ace spectrum, so for a romance to work for me, which rarely happens, it pretty much has to work completely divested of sex, more-or-less.
But the best thing about good romance has always been Ephron-esk for me, in the sense that it has a fairy tale quality to it. But that alteration to reality is rooted in reality. These people are their best selves when with one another. And it’s sad that that feels like a fairy tale, perhaps, but life has enough challenges, especially when you’re trying to make a relationship work, and we deserve to have their trust rewarded.
What this book does so wonderfully is presenting problems to be surmounted that don’t romanticize incredibly toxic, sometimes abusive behaviours, and highlights important issues like emotional abuse and gaslighting and other fairly heavy topics, in a still overall wholesome way. There isn’t pain for pains sake. No physical violence when I was expecting it to go that way. It’s maybe one of the first books ever where it does fulfill the fairy tale aspects of belief in those around us where the lover interests struggle with personal issues that aren’t sensationalized.
I have friends like Tiffany as well, so this particularly hit home for me. It’s really understated how seriously warped a person can become from emotional abuse. Their perceptions of themselves and others, their memories, are all altered. It was handled, from what I can tell, really well.
Really, as long as you can get past the somewhat difficult conceit that gets the plot going, and the fact that it’s not concerned with being Literary, Which, was the largest hump I myself had as I read it (I’m a craft snob, I admit), I can’t imagine not warming to this. There’s so much heart and good natured faith in people, that it’s actually a bit inspiring, by proxy. Which, if that’s not the absolute best I can hope for from the genre, what else could I rate it, really?