I wanted to shout about The Flat Share by Beth O’Leary from the rooftops, but I couldn’t access it from my flat, so I’m just going to leave my review here instead.

The plot:

Tiffy and Leon share a flat. Tiffy and Leon share a bed. Tiffy and Leon have never met…

Their friends think they’re crazy, but it’s the perfect solution: night-worker 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 to feel at home you need to throw the rulebook out the window.

I loved it from the bottom of my heart

This book is just something else – upon finishing, I tried my utmost hardest to find a fault – for a balanced review and all that jazz – but I really couldn’t. It is just perfect.

It has everything you could want in a rom-com, the parts to literally make you laugh out loud (seriously, be careful if you are reading this on the tube, it may cause embarrassment) and the romance to make your heart swoon. There were multiple times where I just couldn’t stop smiling for several pages.

Here’s some of the things I loved the most about The Flat Share:

• The jokes – it takes a lot to make me laugh, but oh boy, was I howling!
• The friends – we all need friends like the ones the protagonists have. They’re just so fabulous and believable;
• The writing – it’s relatively basic, but so flawless it was easy to imagine their appearances and little things like their furniture;
• Tiffy and Leon – you will fall in love with these characters. I felt their sadness, happiness, every emotion under the sun. I also may have experienced my first fictional character crush with Leon;
• It’s modern – I felt like this could honestly be happening right down the street. It’s based in London, so obviously this was closer to home for me, but you definitely get the feeling that this could be happening anywhere;
• The voices are distinct – Tiffy and Leon have different dialects, and this is shown really well. It’s believable that they will speak like this, too.
• It just felt so real.

This list could go on forever, but the main thing for me is how precious The Flat Share is. It brought me so much joy in the short time reading it, and I loved it from the bottom of my heart.

It’s so heart-warming, and definitely one of those books which I’ll read time and time again, and I’m confident I’ll feel the same way each time. It’s not just about Tiffy and Leon, but also had intriguing stories along the way, which were intertwined incredibly well.

I was crying at the end, but still wishing the book had hundreds of more pages, because I just didn’t want it to finish.

You’ll see this book in my Top Books of 2019 article. I can feel it already. The Flat Share will definitely have a special place in my heart for years.

The Flat Share, Beth O’Leary, RRP £12.99 (paperback); Book Depository 

Pages: 391

Publisher: Quercus Books

Genre: Romantic Comedy/ Fiction