Review: The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary

What if your roommate is your soul mate? A joyful, quirky romantic comedy, Beth O'Leary's The Flatshare is a feel-good novel about finding love in the most unexpected of ways.

Tiffy and Leon share an apartment. Tiffy and Leon have never met.

After a bad breakup, Tiffy Moore needs a place to live. Fast. And cheap. But the apartments in her budget have her wondering if astonishingly colored mold on the walls counts as art.

Desperation makes her open minded, so she answers an ad for a flatshare. Leon, a night shift worker, will take the apartment during the day, and Tiffy can have it nights and weekends. He'll only ever be there when she's at the office. In fact, they'll never even have to meet.

Tiffy and Leon start writing each other notes - first about what day is garbage day, and politely establishing what leftovers are up for grabs, and the evergreen question of whether the toilet seat should stay up or down. Even though they are opposites, they soon become friends. And then maybe more.

But falling in love with your roommate is probably a terrible idea...especially if you've never met.

Paperback 366 pages

Published May 28th 2019

by Flatiron Books

5/5

I received this book through my Valentines SweetReadsBox and to be honest, it was an impulse purchase -I’m not into books labeled romance. Historical romance is good because I usually get a history lesson at the same time. Rom/Com is something new for me and being in the mood for something lite, but not too cute and fluffy, I grabbed this to take on a recent cruise and I loved it! Making my favorites list as well.

Told with alternating POV between Tiffy and Leon they communicated via post-it notes and texts. It was witty and made me smile, it felt natural and totally believable. Both of them have baggage they don’t share and were struggling to deal with.

What I really enjoyed were the many layers, it wasn’t just a romance story but dealt with other issues that included abuse and gaslighting. These serious subject matters were handled with the right balance and not minimized but brought upfront and center, it takes a talented author that can do that in the midst of a rom/com.

This is Beth O’Leary’s debut, she has set a high bar for herself. Her second book releases next month, The Switch and I can’t wait to read it.

This book is part of my 2020 reading of my shelf challenge.