Rating: 83% | B- | ★★★★
Warnings: + Abuse Synopsis (from Goodreads): Tiffy Moore needs a cheap flat, and fast. Leon Twomey works nights and needs cash. Their friends think they’re crazy, but it’s the perfect solution: Leon occupies the one-bed flat while Tiffy’s at work in the day, and she has the run of the place the rest of the time. But with obsessive ex-boyfriends, demanding clients at work, wrongly imprisoned brothers and, of course, the fact that they still haven’t met yet, they’re about to discover that if you want the perfect home you need to throw the rulebook out the window… Non-Spoiler Review The Flatshare has many good qualities—dual POV, well-rounded characters, abuse portrayal—but the execution of these qualities somehow leaves the story lacking. O'Leary constructs her dual POV world with precision. Authors often fall into the trap of writing their characters too similarly to each other, defeating the entire purpose of multiple POV, but O'Leary smartly avoids that at the syntactical level. Dialogue is a primary characteristic of Tiffy's more energetic chapters, while the levelheaded Leon has more laconic, personal pronoun-less insights. Moreover, O'Leary carefully addresses emotional abuse, a topic just starting to peek through in today's fiction. It was a topic I certainly wasn't expecting in this feel-good novel. But either because of the multiple storylines O'Leary juggles or because of the sometimes very divergent events in Tiffy and Leon's lives, I finished this novel at ease, but not amazed. I wanted and want, even months after completing the novel, more of something. Of what, I'm not sure, but it feels as though I'm running my fingers over a paperback without covers after all is said and done.
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From the ArchiveWhile my main reviews are organized by seasons and I try to write reviews immediately after I finish reading, there are always stories that lose to the hustle and bustle of everyday life. From the Archive is a redemptive collection of mini-reviews of books I read in the past that continue to captivate me.
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