I'm really not sure where to begin with this one. The book was such a surprise, I expected it to be a general ya romance that was good, but nothing out of the ordinary. I'm so pleased to say I was wrong, it exceeded all my expectations and is definitely one of the best books I've read in a while. 
 Julie Seagle turns up in Boston expecting to move into her first apartment and begin college. The apartment however doesn't exist, it appears she and her mother gave away their money to a scam. Her Mom's friend from college agrees to take her in and that's where things begin to get crazy. Something is wrong with the Watkins house, Erin is distant, focussed on her career, Matt, the middle child is studying at MIT and as well as lacking in social skills he appears to do nothing but study. Then there is Celeste, she's 13 but has no friends and carries a cardboard cutout of her oldest brother Finn around with her everywhere she goes. 
 Finn has finished college and is travelling the world, through facebook chats and emails Julie tries to get him to help her figure out what is going on with his family. But perhaps the answer is obvious and Julie should look closer to home to figure it out. 
 Ok, so I figured out what was going on before the end. I kept trying to reason with myself that I was wrong and there was another reason for why the family acted the way they did...I really, really wanted not to be right. 
 Jessica Park has created extremely well developed characters, I found that even those we barely saw had a place in the book, I loved the interactions between all of them, especially the online dialogue. Including facebook updates and emails added something extra to the book, we got to see different sides of people where they felt like they could be honest and didn't have to hide things so much. 
 I loved Julie, she managed to be funny, hurt and confused all at once. Her facebook updates made me laugh a lot as well as the conversations she had with people, but she was hurting over the absence of her father who in all honesty is a complete jerk. I could feel her confusion over the Watkins family, she wanted to know what was wrong with them but most of all she wanted to help. Celeste is fantastic, she's extremely quirky and more than a little broken. I felt so sorry for the way she was hurting but I loved her personality, once she started to get her life together a bit more you could really see how funny she was. I did however find her dialogue very unrealistic, although she's a good character, if you actually put the story into the real world I wouldn't say she is very fitting of a teenager, even though she's meant to be unusual. Matt spends so much of his life trying to keep his family together and get his college degree. Seriously, he is working insanely hard. I wished he didn't have to deal with the way his parents acted and all his sisters problems, he had his own issues but put them aside for everyone else. He was geeky and definitely needed a new wardrobe but most of all he was such a nice guy. 
 Finn...Finn really needs his own paragraph. He is this character that never actually appears in the book but is the reason for everything, for Julie feeling the way she does, for Celeste having no handle on life and Matt keeping everyone slightly sane. His facebook updates cracked me up and I looked forward to them and his conversations with Julie. I have kind of mixed feelings about him, he can't take all the credit for how he acts...this will make sense if you read it I promise. Despite this it's pretty impossible to read this without falling completely in love with him though. 
 The family secret was really sad. I hurt for all of them because it was so unfair that it had to happen. The ending though was delivered extremely well, there were a couple of ways it could have been done but I thought Jessica Park did something really original, yes we got a happily ever after but it wasn't an everyone-is-ok because well...when you read the book you'll realise that is kind of impossible. She showed characters that were learning to deal with the life they were living instead of hiding in the past, forming new relationships instead of clinging on to old ones. So, considering everything the ending was perfect. 
 Also if you go to Jessica Park's website there's some really cool extras including how she came up with the idea of the book which I really loved reading. She is also awesome and replies on twitter, so hundreds of extra bonus points for that! 
 I hope this review was slightly coherent, I loved this book so much there are no words to really explain it, just get a copy and you'll understand. 
 Review originally published on Holly Was Here 
 I would say that although I liked this book and initially gave it a 5 star rating I really don't like the way Jessica Park has treated some of her readers. Not everyone is going to like a book, even if it's very popular. If an author can't take criticism they shouldn't make their work public.