Synopsis
Matt is a junior at MIT. He’s geeky, he’s witty, he’s brilliant.
And he’s also very, very stupid.
When beautiful, cool, insightful Julie moves in with Matt’s family, why (oh why!) does he pretend to be his absent brother Finn for her alleged benefit?
It seems harmless enough until her short-term stay becomes permanent. And until it snowballs into heart-squeezing insanity. And until he falls in love with Julie, and Julie falls in love with Finn.
But … Matt is the right one for her. If only he can make Julie see it. Without telling her the truth, without shattering them all. Particularly his fragile sister Celeste, who may need Julie the most.
You saw Matt through Julie’s eyes in FLAT-OUT LOVE. Now go deeper into Matt’s world in this FLAT-OUT MATT novella. Live his side of the story, break when his heart breaks, and fall for the unlikely hero all over again.
Take an emotional skydive for two prequel chapters and seven Flat-Out Love chapters retold from his perspective, and then land with a brand-new steamy finale chapter from Julie.
4.5/5 stars
—————————————————————————
My Review
For those of you who have yet to read Flat-Out Love, then I’d advise you go and download that right now, read it then download Flat-Out Matt and read that straight after.
Flat-Out Matt is a companion novella to Flat-Out Love. It contains the ‘best’ scenes where us readers and lovers of FOL wanted to see Matt’s thoughts and feelings throughout that particular scene. All the scenes that were included in this novella were all the scenes that I absolutely adored and wanted to read in Matt’s POV. Every chapter I was wondering which scene would be next and I was not disappointed in the ones that Ms. Park used and wrote.
As mentioned in the synopsis, there is a prequel at the start which starts with Finn and Matt hiking and talking about life and their family. I loved reading this side of both of them, especially Matt, who, in Flat-Out Love really had to grew up fast and look after Celeste and do everything around the house as well as attend classes. It seemed that hiking made him free, if only for a moment.
Even though you know what happens in FOL and the story that both these books take, it’s still great to see Matt’s point of view throughout everything that happened. From him starting what he did and why he justified it, to watching him panic over how out of hand its gotten and to how he was feeling along the way – his emotions changing with every scene. You knew what was going to happen, but when you read it in Matt’s POV, it was still heartbreaking to read because everything he did, he did it for Julie and his family, even though he was the one who didn’t want to keep her in the dark with the secret yet that is exactly what he was doing.
But we all fell in love with Matt in FOL and you will definitely love him even more now in FOM because we get it all from his point of view, apart from the last one which is Julie’s.
You can still feel how broken the family are, and Julie, but with her presence, the characters are breaking out from their old shells, into new ones. They are still as loveable and hilarious and even though there are scenes that are not next to each other when reading FOL, in FOM they all blend together brilliantly and the timeline isn’t off at all!
The last scene is steamy. Jessica Park was not lying when she said that, and it was just great to read beyond the last page of FOL and into the added scenes in FOM with Matt and Julie being together and being in love. It was the perfect ending to a fantastic book and I loved knowing that Matt and Julie are totally happy and in love with one another after everything that has happened in their lives.
You all need to read this novella. It’s not a long one, but it packs a hell of a lot in it that you will fly by reading it and come out at the end all deliriously happy that everything turns out super amazing and sexy for Matt and Julie. (And of course, happy for Celeste too! I love that girl.)
Z. Elizabeth 