ARC Book Review: The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary

I received an e-arc of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way.

Publisher: Quercus

Published: April 2019

Pages: 400

Summary

Tiffy and Leon share a flat

Tiffy and Leon share a bed

Tiffy and Leon have never met...

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...

My Thoughts...

The Flatshare is a cute book starting from a very unusual premise: Tiffy and Leon sleep in the same bed despite having never met, as one of them is home while the other is at work. It is a romance book, so we already kind of know how things will turn out, but it was nevertheless fun to see how our MCs got there.

For some reason, I struggled to get into this book at first, but by the end I was invested in the story and the characters. I really liked the idea of having alternating POVs, so we got to see things from both Tiffy's and Leon's perspective and it was easier to understand both characters' background and motivations. Still, some things were quite baffling, such as Leon's initial decision not to meet Tiffy at all, despite living in the same house... like, seriously?! But eventually I came to care for both of them, and their amazing friends. I really liked to see how well fleshed out the characters were, and how they grew as the book progressed. 

Despite the light, fuzzy romance, the book also dealt with some pretty hard topics like gaslighting and emotional abuse, and miscarriages of justice. It was good to see these elements integrated into the narrative, but I feel like there should be a trigger warning there as they're not things one would necessarily expect from the blurb. 

Overall, this was a funny, light-hearted book with some serious undertones that rang truer than most romance books, even though some bits didn't really work for me. I'll definitely be reading more from this author!

Rating: 3.5/5