G575 Book Review of Read Bottom Up by Neel Shah and Skye Chatham

Name of Book: Read Bottom Up

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)


Add to Goodreads badge
Purchase Links

neelAbout 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.
skyeSkye 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
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.)

Comments

  1. Heather J @ TLC Book ToursMay 8, 2015 at 10:43 AM

    I agree that there is so much left out when communication relies only on texts and emails. Personal conversation is just irreplaceable.

    Thanks for being a part of the tour!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

G324 E-Reading Book Review of Mozart's Wife by Juliet Waldron

Image
Name of Book: Mozart's Wife Author: Juliet Waldron ISBN: 9781461109617 Publisher: Createspace Type of book: 1700s, Mozart, Konstanza, music, partying, drinking, Opera, debt, birth, Vienna, Austria, marriage, rock star status, destruction Year it was published: 2011 Summary: Jon Baxley, Editor of Amazing Authors Showcase says it all in his review. "This author's fictionalized account of Constanze Webber--an extraordinary woman who just happened to marry an even more extraordinary man named Mozart--brings 18th Century Vienna and its people vividly alive. Constanze would have been a remarkable woman for any era, struggling with her own perspective on life while trying to cope and understand the icon composer with whom she chose to share her life. But as an 18th Century woman, she is all the more remarkable. This book is well written and thoroughly researched, that's obvious from the details in dialogue and events. I suspect little of this work is pur...
Read more

October 16th- October 22nd, 2022

Image
 The Sunday Post The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted here @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on your blog for the week ahead. Join in weekly, bi-weekly or for a monthly wrap up. See rules here:  Sunday Post Meme #3 Why I Hate Watching Movies and TV Shows  Technically these days and ages should be a dream come true when it comes to movies and TV shows; diversity, inclusion, variety of storylines for every person imaginable, yet to this day I can't stand watching TV nor movies. If you partake of watching it, you are not worse nor better than I am. We are simply different than one another, and I don't see TV as pedestrian or opium for the masses or anything of the kind. (Am I dumb that I enjoy video games and have played RPG games in the past? Nope.) I grew up in the '90s, arriving as a religious ethnic minority from former So...
Read more

October 30th-November 5th, 2022

Image
 The Sunday Post The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted here @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on your blog for the week ahead. Join in weekly, bi-weekly or for a monthly wrap up. See rules here:  Sunday Post Meme #5 Childhood Memories I sometimes wonder how my six year old son will see his life in the future: will he feel that his childhood was ideal, or will the ideal be simply an illusion that I hope to impart to him? I am sure my parents wished and tried to make sure I remember the good parts of life, and there are fleeting glimpses of fun times such as traveling to a water park or even taking a Disney vacation. But beyond the big gestures, I recall yummy food, videos, music in addition to a whole ton of guilt and anxiety. My son, I hope its safe to say, has probably more of an awesome childhood than I did, and I often hope th...
Read more