I enjoy Beth O'Leary's writing. Her plots are creative and unique, and her characters are authentic (people that remind me of friends, family, and acquaintances). While this one wasn't my favorite read-- the way things unfolded towards the end wasn't my cup of tea-- it was enjoyable.

Very cute book! Excited for the adaptation! A inventive take on the concept of finding love in the most unexpected places

Beth O'Leary never misses. This book was so sweet and lovely– it dealt with serious topics while still being fun, and watching the leads fall gradually for each other based only on their notes was so heart-warming and had me kicking my feet.

Thank you to Flatiron Books for this ARC. This book turned out to be a pleasant surprise. The characters were quirky and relatable.

I loved the slow burn romance and quirky friendships in this book. The Flatshare is a feel-good novel that will be hard to forget.

I love a good slow burn romance and this one certainly did not disappoint. I loved Tiffy and Leon and the way the met. Despite the setup feeling a little crazy, I felt that it really worked and was wonderfully executed and original. This book was both highly emotional and incredibly funny, and I really appreciated that both worked so well together. I will be highly recommending this to all romance readers.

You know those books that just call to your soul?! The ones that feel like they were made for you? That was me with this book!! It was light-hearted and SO funny (I was laughing out loud in public). I really loved that it wasn't super cheesy or overly-dramatic. But yet had enough seriousness to it that it wasn't boring.

I was grinning like a fool the whole time I read this. Seriously, the whole concept of this book was so original and fun. The fact that they're sharing a flat but at different times of the day so they never actually see each other but communicated through sticky notes. It was so unique!!! I really wanna start doing that with my hubs but I'm sure he wouldn't play along.

I find one of the most important things to me in a story is loving the characters and I adored the two main characters so much especially Tiffy!! She was such a hoot and I want to be her bestie. For real, I feel like we'd get along so well.

There is currently so much buzz about this book and I totally get it. I'll be adding it to my favorites list up there with The Hating Game. It was hilarious and heartfelt while still having enough sexiness to get your heart racing (but not too much to make you super uncomfortable in public.)

It was hard for me to put together a coherent review because honestly I just wanted to yell,<b> "I LOVED THIS BOOK."</b> Needless to say, you need to read this if you're a fan of sweet, funny romances

This is a sweet and enjoyable read about Tiffy and Leon. They are going to be flatmates. She needs a place to live and he is looking for a rent share. The twist is that, for a while, the two do not meet. Leon works nights while Tiffy works days; they plan never to be in their home at the same time. How do they get from this agreement to a relationship? Read this one to find out. It is a nice story.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher. All opinions are my own.

This charming debut features lovely characters being nice to one another. It’s easy to root for them to get together and solve the problems in each of their lives. Be prepared to hand-sell this one. It’s a sweet romance that will win over readers once they discover it on the shelves.”

If you love cute, quirky, and heartwarming then you should read this book. I really enjoyed the getting to know you through post it notes idea and I fell in love with both Leon and Tiffy.

The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary made a huge splash when it came out in 2019. And I missed the boat on that book and have kept on meaning to read it since then. I finally got the perfect opportunity to read and review it this month since it is being reprinted in early January.

The premise is delicious: Leon Twome is a palliative care night nurse at a hospice and Tiffany (Tiffy) Moore works as an editor at a niche publishing company. Leon's brother has been wrongly incarcerated in a prison for a crime he did not commit. In order to pay for his lawyer fees, Leon needs to generate more cash than his salary pays. So he comes up with the harebrained, brilliant idea of sharing his flat with someone with a day job.

Tiffy has once and for all broken up with her on-and-off boyfriend and needs a living situation stat. Unfortunately, she, not only owes her ex a lot of money, but her job pays her a pittance. So she needs someplace cheap, and over the misgivings of her friends, she is taken with the idea of a flatshare. The deal is negotiated by Leon's jealous girlfriend, and the hours are strictly set of who is supposed to be at the apartment when. The book employs a beloved romance trope: only one bed. But O'Leary turns this on its head by having the protagonists sleep in it when the other is not there.

I laughed when I first read the setup. It is so crazy; how will it even fly? But O'Leary not only makes it work, but shows herself to be a highly skilled storyteller. She really sells this story of how these two protagonists build a relationship, drawing ever closer to each other, without ever seeing each other. They become friends long before attraction plays a part in their relationship. I love that Tiffy and Leon handwrite notes to each other. Such an old-fashioned way of getting to know the other person. Just as Leon learns that Tiffy is quirky, colorful, warm, and kind, so does the reader. Just as the reader learns that Leon is patient, thoughtful, dependable, and loyal, so does Tiffy. And just as they're becoming friends, so is the reader befriending them.

O'Leary does a fantastic job showing the PTSD Tiffy suffers as a result of the trauma of her ex's emotional abuse. The helplessness, the irresistible tendency to give in to his controlling ways, the drowning doubt of self-worth, the pull of believing his version of events, the flashbacks, the trembling...all make the reader choke up over Tiffy's suffering and feel anger towards the one who has dimmed her light and made her kind soul suffer. O'Leary skillfully shows the escalating abusive arc of Tiffy's ex as one of the driving forces in the second half of the book.

By contrasting Leon's innate decency, warmth, and caring ways to Tiffy's ex's insanely possessive ways, O'Leary shows Tiffy what a good relationship looks like. She realizes that her self-worth is invaluable and that she deserves to be with someone who thinks her incomparable, one worthy of respect and thoughtfulness. Her sense of self grows in proportion to how much Leon prizes what she brings to his life: a sense of fun, impulsiveness, warmth. <br>
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And loyalty to him, and thus, by extension, loyalty to his brother. When Tiffy is in, she is all in. She embodies what is one of my top goals in life: "flow with the go." She marvels that her relationship with Leon is one of equals. Given how much Leon's mother suffered abuse at the hands of the men she dated, Leon has always been very clear from the start of his relationship with Tiffy: equality, consent, and respect will always rule the day.

O'Leary's conversational writing style is part of her storytelling charm. But that style does take some getting used to. There are sentence fragments, quirky punctuation, and grammatical liberties taken in service of the artistic voice. However, the story is so entertaining and tugs on your heartstrings so, that you focus on the emotions that the author is so good at conveying.

Having read this book, I can well believe why it featured so prominently on so many Best Books lists in 2019 and has eleven thousand 4.5 star ratings on Amazon. I loved the story!

[I received a digital advanced review copy from the publisher, Flatiron Books, via Netgalley.]

Review published here: http://keirasoleore.blogspot.com/2020/12/review-flatshare-by-beth-oleary.html

Let me take you through this rollercoaster experience. I wrote my review as I was reading so you’ll see my exact progression of thoughts and how things changed…

I thought about quitting this book about a hundred times in the first 20% or so. Oh my god. Leon’s chapters absolutely killed me! The book alternates between Tiffy and Leon. Their personalities are super different, with Tiffy being bubbly while Leon is no-nonsense. The way the author decided to differentiate between the two personalities and beef up the fact that Leon is a straight-to-the-point kind of guy was to write his chapters primarily in sentence fragments? As you can tell, I can SEE why this was done and what the author was trying to accomplish when emphasizing the kind of personality he has, but I feel like other writers would be able to do this without compromising the readability of their book. You can show his personality through his actions and thought processes, instead of making his thoughts in fragments as if he somehow doesn’t have time to think a full thought out. After wanting to throw my book for a long time when reading, I decided to bring the audiobook in more often. I always figured I’d alternate the two formats but it became a necessity to listen a bit more than read.

The overall premise of the book is… odd. Do people do this in real life? I can totally see the logic behind it in theory, but in practice…?! So, Leon wants to rent out his flat during the evening hours and weekends because he works overnight shifts (and can stay with his girlfriend each weekend). Why not make some money on rent by literally renting his bed/flat out for someone who works normal business hours and would need it during the exact times he’s not home? Again, this makes logical sense, but it’s so weird to think of literally sleeping in a stranger’s bed when they’re not sleeping in said bed. Same sheets and everything? I could MAYBE see if the other person (Tiffy) put a comforter down on top of his bed to sleep on top and had her own sheets/blankets that she would remove in time for him to use the bed… but to actually sleep under the covers? Really?

I literally forced myself to keep going with this book. All of the reviews said Leon’s chapters took some getting used to, but once they did, they fell in complete love with it. Seriously, most of my blog friends rated this five stars with just a few people dipping under. 3.5 stars is the lowest I saw from anyone I personally know. Because of all that, I became determined. I wouldn’t quit yet. I’ll be honest: the audio format REALLY helped with this one when I was struggling. Leon’s chapters were definitely still choppy because that’s how they were written, but they were much less so when being read out loud. It sounded a little more natural coming from someone’s voice.

There’s one specific chapter where I turned a corner on this book and knew I couldn’t DNF it – the first round of sticky notes back and forth (I forget which chapter this is – somewhere in the first 20% of the book). They just had such charming interactions via notes in their apartment and I knew the chemistry would be off the charts without them even meeting each other. It was insane.

Over time, I fell more and more in love with this book and these characters. Tiffy, with her exuberant personality, perfectly matching with her opposite in Leon, as well as Gerty, Mo, Rachel, and Richie on the phone. I wanted to hug everyone and remain with this friend group forever. Without spoilers, the chapter or two at the end made my heart sing. Yes, I used that cheesy phrase.

By the end, I didn’t use the audio as much because I was desperate to finish the book as quickly as the chapter allotment for the All Grown Up Book Club would allow. (Okay fine I finished the last two days’ worth of chapters in one day because I just NEEDED to finish!) It’s kind of amazing how this reading experience turned around for me. I saw many reviews say that they grew to actually like Leon’s chapter formatting but I will say I never liked it. I certainly got used to it and it didn’t bother me as much, but I still strongly believe the author could have shown he was a man of few words without actually being a man of sentence fragments.

Because of the rollercoaster of emotions, I wrestled for far too long on what to rate this book. It was so perfect from a story perspective and even Leon’s chapters were short enough to just deal with the writing. I loved how it balanced serious issues like gaslighting and emotional abuse with light flirting, hilarious moments, and a slow progression of romance. I didn’t think I could ignore my pure rage at the beginning of the book when rating it… so I settled on 4.5 stars. HIGHLY recommend this one and please give it until the sticky note chapter. You’ll be hooked right after that.

What a charming read.  Tiffy needs a place to live.  She is moving out of her apartment and out of a failed relationship - and into the unknown, a flatshare.  Tiffy gets the flat overnight and Leon gets it during the day while Tiffy is at work.  Their relationship begins with notes to one another and turns into something more.  

The characters are well-developed and likeable and their story keeps you reading to find out how their story ends, yet wishing that their story wasn't ending so soon.  After reading The Flatshare, I headed straight to Netgalley to see if O'Leary's new novel, The Switch, was available

What a difference an audiobook can make! The Flatshare was a DNF for me in print a couple months ago, but, because of great reviews, I decided to give it another shot on audio, and I really, really enjoyed it.

My primary issue with The Flatshare the first time was that it was slow to get going; no interaction between the leads doesn't really build the tension. That and, worse, Leon's POV really didn't work for me. His chapters read like a bullet list of things he needed to do or think about. The style of that didn't work for me at all, but it seemed like something the audio could fix, thus I decided to give it another go (especially because I love British narrators).

The audio brought The Flatshare alive, and I had such a different response to it this time. The chapters that previously didn't hook me sucked me in right off, and this is one of those audiobooks I didn't want to put down. Carrie Hope Fletcher's sprightly narration takes Tiffy's irrepressible spirit and makes it feel lovable, where in print I found her a bit extra, though admittedly I didn't get far enough to really know what was going on with her. At any rate, Tiffy as performed by Fletcher is a delight.

The style of Leon's chapters will never be my favorite, and they do sometimes feel slightly odd when narrated too, but it definitely helped a ton to have Kwaku Fortune reading it aloud to me. It took a long time for Leon to really grow on me. At first I found him kind of boring, but by the end I felt quite connected to him. He's a serious awkward penguin who struggles with social anxiety (not diagnosed in the book but he def does), and there's something very lovely and relatable about the way he just felt so comfortable around Tiffy (and vice versa).

Initially, Tiffy's moping about her ex-boyfriend was one of the weaker points of the book, but it ends up being a really powerful aspect, as the plot dives into her toxic relationship with Justin. Without feeling preachy, the book does some excellent education on emotional abuse, and it could be important to the people who read it for that reason. Obviously neither that nor the plot about Leon's brother who has been wrongfully imprisoned is light and fluffy, but I think they're done very well.

If you like audiobooks and romance, I'd absolutely 100% recommend this, even if you weren't sure about this book in print.

P.S. I still think the US cover for this book is one of the most hideous book covers I have ever seen.

I felt like the romance was really on the backburner for this title. There were so many other relationships, characters, and plotlines that I felt like this novel wasn't really focused on the romantic relationship that I thought was meant to be at the center. I felt there was at least one too many side plot with its own set of characters and conflicts. Therefore, it was difficult for me to focus on the relationship or root for them as a couple, and I didn't get a feel for them together that much. I don't think this book is a true romance novel but feels more closely aligned with literary fiction that contains romantic relationships. I also think the marketing is a bit deceptive, as this book deals with emotional abuse and gaslighting in a previous relationship, and that could be potentially triggering and unexpected for readers expecting a lighter romantic relationship.

I think I've found a new favorite author. I preordered her next book already. I hope my favorite romance novel podcasts cover this title soon!

I was drawn in by the premise of this book – two people who live in the same apartment, but have never met – but then I was drawn in by the characters, the story and the unexpected humor. Tiffy is coming off a bad breakup and needs a new place in a hurry and Leon only uses his apartment for sleeping during the day since he works a graveyard shift. As the two start leaving notes for each other (at first slightly snippy), they slowly come to like each other but. . . they’ve still never met. I’m looking forward to her second book, The Switch, coming out in August!

I just spent the past day unable to put this quirky, adorable, laugh-out-loud, love story down! Now THIS is how a romantic comedy should be done. O'Leary does a fantastic job creating characters you want to root for in a romance with just the right amount of spice while also exploring some serious subjects. I loved it and I can hardly wait to get my hands on her upcoming novel, The Switch!

Flatshare is about two individuals agree to never meet and sharing a one bedroom flat. This book is written with alternating viewpoints of the two love interest. Although the premise is a bit different and yet predictable I really enjoyed this book. It read into my hopes for drama as well as a happy ending. I would say that this book does make mention of an emotionally abusive relationship and could be a trigger for individuals who have been in one.

I love the premise of The Flatshare. It's such a weird living situation, that you know feelings are going to develop. That didn't bother me - the amount of predictable plot was just the right amount.

Overall, I really enjoyed The Flatshare and definitely recommend it.

Beth O'Leary has come up with something unique in THE FLATSHARE. Here we see Tiffy and Leon sharing a flat in the non-traditional sense; she gets the flat in the evening while he goes to work as a night palliative care nurse, and he gets the flat in the morning while she goes to work as a book editor.

We see Tiffy's change and growth through the course of this book. While Leon and her friends help her, it's really her who did all the heavy lifting and I was cheering for her toward the end of the book. She's come so far from the Tiffy we saw at the start of the book, and I hope every woman in her situation has such supportive friends. Tiffy is amazing; I love how she's so bubbly and warm, open and tender-hearted. The hero, Leon, is such a darling, and his devotion to his brother endearing.

Tiffy and Leon alternated chapters from the first person points of view, and while I appreciate the author's efforts to differentiate how these two protagonists think, it was hard to read Leon's chapters at first. I have to admit I soldiered on because I wanted to get to the chapter where Leon and Tiffy first interacted. And when I get there, when they started exchanging notes, that's it. I was hooked. I loved their notes; their personalities really shone through.

I also love Tiffy's friends--the brusque Gerty and compassionate Mo. Whatever their qualities, they were both loyal friends who stood by Tiffy and I love that.

THE FLATSHARE is an engaging read you don't want to miss!