Review: Goodnight Tweetheart by Teresa Medeiros

Title: Goodnight Tweetheart
Series: n/a
Genres/Themes: sweet romance, long-distance connection
Author: Teresa Medeiros

Quick Take:
This book is impossibly cute, with its engaging protagonist, charming main couple, and surprisingly well-managed format of communication by 140-character tweet. It's an easy, quick read that will almost certainly have you grinning from ear to ear.

Book Description (via Goodreads):
     Abigail Donovan has a lot of stuff she should be doing. Namely writing her next novel. A bestselling author who is still recovering from a near Pulitzer Prize win and the heady success that follows Oprah’s stamp of approval, she is stuck at Chapter Five and losing confidence daily. But when her publicist signs her up for a Twitter account, she’s intrigued. What’s all the fuss?
     Taken under the wing of one of her Twitter followers, “MarkBaynard"—a quick witted, quick-typing professor on sabbatical—Abby finds it easy to put words out into the world 140 characters at a time. And once she gets a handle on tweets, retweets, direct messages, hashtags, and trends, she starts to feel unblocked in writing and in life. After all, why should she be spending hours in her apartment staring at her TweetDeck and fretting about her stalled career when Mark is out there traveling the world andliving?
     Or is he?
     Told almost entirely in tweets and DMs, Goodnight Tweetheart is a truly modern take on a classic tale of love and loss—a Griffin and Sabine for the Twitter generation.

Review:

When I first heard about this book, I was both intrigued and wary…and both of those reactions had to do with the book's premise of "Girl Meets Boy on Twitter. Numerous Tweets Ensue." Though described by the author as inspired by Sleepless in Seattle-style stories--and really, what hopeless romantic wouldn't immediately want to go for that?--the thought of potentially having to read through pages of "Wat R U wearing omg lmao?/" communications was enough to make me keep the book sitting on the TBR pile.

Recently, I picked the book up and flipped through the first chapter to see what it was about. One day later, I finished the book and had a silly grin plastered on my face. This is such an adorable story! Thankfully, the apprehensions I'd once had were quite unfounded, because the sections of the book that are conveyed via tweet (or twitter direct message) are quite accessible, even fading into the background as the actual communication between the main characters comes through. Though I imagine some of the more adept Twitterers out there might get an extra kick out of the book's premise, there's far more to the story than that particular method of communication.

The story is narrated in the first-person by novelist Abigail Donovan, and I must say that she was such a pleasure to follow. Her considerable and very humbling fall from the limelight both amuses and allows the reader to relate to her. Her introduction to the world of Twitter was believable, as was her being sucked into the easy form of communication that the site allows. It was her journey from seemingly defeated writer to optimistic and productive artist that kept me hooked.

Of course, there was also the budding connection between Abby and Mark. ^_^ Theirs was a chaste, butterflies-in-tummy-inducing relationship. The author's inspiration by Sleepless in Seattle absolutely showed; the level of sweetness is considerable, but there is also a measure of emotional peaks and valleys. I laughed, I cried, I went and downloaded TweetDeck.

To whom would I recommend this book? Golly, anyone who enjoys sweet, romantic stories. If you liked Sleepless or You've Got Mail…then you've got to get this one. Even thinking about the book now brings a smile to my face. ^_^

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

"I really liked it."