G575 Book Review of Read Bottom Up by Neel Shah and Skye Chatham
Author: Neel Shah and Skye Chatham
ISBN: 978-0-06-226213-4
Publisher: Dey St
Type of book: texts, emails, social media, boy meets girl, best friends, romance, dates through social media, fast and fun read, New York, modern times
Year it was published: 2015
Summary:
A charming novel about falling in love, or like, in the digital age, told in an inventive, creative style.
Madeline and Elliot meet at a New York City food event. Flirtation, online, ensues. A romance, potentially eternal, possibly doomed, begins.
And, like most things in life today, their early exchanges are very public, available to be scrutinized and interpreted by well-intentioned friends (aka amateur love doctors) who are a mere click away. Of course like all good email trails, this one reads from the bottom up.
Madeline and Elliot's relationship unfolds through a series of thrilling, confounding, and funny exchanges with each other and with their best friends. The result is a brand new kind of modern romantic comedy, both in format and in content. Read Bottom Up is a brilliant, fresh portrait that captures how enchanting, exciting, and downright confusing falling in love twenty-first-century style can be.
Characters:
The main characters include Madeline, Elliot, David and Emily. Unfortunately very little is known about the characters, aside from the facts that Elliot was a chef and tended to be, well, scatterbrained, Madeline covered the restaurants and is serious minded. David is a lawyer who is also kind of a playboy, and Emily is also serious minded who happens to be a teacher. If you are hoping to find out more details about the characters such as favorite foods or childhoods, unfortunately I can't recall anything specific or memorable about their backgrounds.
Theme:
Its impossible to get the whole story through texts and emails
Plot:
The whole story is made from either texts or emails between Madeline and Elliot, Elliot and David and Madeline and Emily. I am not sure if its two or four authors, but however many wrote the story, its cleverly done and helps both men and women see how social media is used by the opposite gender. Because we only see things through texts and emails, real life dates between Madeline and Elliot aren't used at all, and instead the reader sees the events either through Madeline's or Elliot's points of view. The story focuses completely on the present and very little background of the characters is given.
Author Information:
(From TLC)
Purchase Links
About Neel Shah and Skye Chatham
Neel Shah is a screenwriter in Los Angeles. He used to be a reporter at the New York Post and his work has appeared in Glamour, GQ, and New York magazine.
Skye Chatham is a writer living in New York. Her work has appeared in various publications, including GQ and Maxim.Opinion:
This is definitely a unique and quirky read; something along the lines of using characters' social media to spell out relationships and it unknowingly highlighted gender differences between the men and women when it came to social media. Its a fast read and once you start, you won't be able to let go. The ending is pretty unique and something most people didn't see coming. Being that the reader sees the characters through emails or texts, the characters aren't very developed and its akin to perhaps spying on a friend with barely any knowledge of what is going on. I guess unexpectedly, the story gave me a kick on going for the full story rather than simple texts and emails because a lot can be left out. (Very soon I will read and review Love and Miss Communication, which is about a woman who decides to live without technology, enjoy!)
This is for TLC Book Tour
Tour Stops
Tuesday, April 7th: From the TBR Pile
Wednesday, April 8th: A Chick Who Reads
Thursday, April 9th: Sara’s Organized Chaos
Friday, April 10th: A Bookish Way of Life
Tuesday, April 14th: BookNAround
Wednesday, April 15th: bookchickdi
Thursday, April 16th: Peeking Between the Pages
Friday, April 17th: 5 Minutes For Books
Monday, April 20th: Booksie’s Blog
Wednesday, April 22nd: Bibliotica
Thursday, April 23rd: Thoughts On This ‘n That
Monday, April 27th: Mom in Love With Fiction
Tuesday, April 28th: Walking With Nora
Thursday, April 30th: Kritters Ramblings
Monday, May 4th: Svetlana’s Reads and Views
Wednesday, May 6th: 100 Pages a Day … Stephanie’s Book Reviews
Friday, May 8th: The Discerning Reader
4 out of 5(0: Stay away unless a masochist 1: Good for insomnia 2: Horrible but readable; 3: Readable and quickly forgettable, 4: Good, enjoyable 5: Buy it, keep it and never let it go.)
I agree that there is so much left out when communication relies only on texts and emails. Personal conversation is just irreplaceable.
ReplyDeleteThanks for being a part of the tour!