Title: Click: An Online Love Story
Author: Lisa Becker
Publisher: CreateSpace
Genre: Chick Lit
Pages: 347
How I Read It: ARC received from the author – The views expressed in my review are mine alone and I have received no compensation for these opinions.
Synopsis: Fast approaching her 30th birthday and finding herself not married, not dating, and without even a prospect or a house full of cats, Renee Greene, the heroine of Click: An Online Love Story, reluctantly joins her best guy pal on a journey to find love online in Los Angeles.
The story unfolds through a series of emails between Renee and her best friends (anal-compulsive Mark, the overly-judgmental Ashley, and the over-sexed Shelley) as well as the gentlemen suitors she meets online.
From the guy who starts every story with “My buddies and I were out drinking one night,” to the egotistical “B” celebrity looking for someone to stroke his ego, Renee endures her share of hilarious and heinous cyber dates.
Fraught with BCC’s, FWD’s and inadvertent Reply to All’s, readers will root for Renee to “click” with the right man.
*Synopsis taken from Goodreads
My Review: Ever wanted to experience the world of online dating without the actual “dating” part? Click does a great job of bringing that world to you. I read this book in a handful of hours, and the kinds of men Renee finds herself interacting with are, to a large extent, exactly what you would expect. After reading the book, I discovered that the author herself used actual life experiences to write this one, which makes it feel all the more authentic.
The premise of this story really interested me – in a world where online dating is something almost everyone has done at this point, it’s something we can all laugh at and share in the misery and amusement together. Who doesn’t want to hear that someone else has experienced the same horror that we did?!
I really enjoyed most of the characters, with the exception of Ashley, who reminded me too much of a couple of people in my life and that wasn’t my favorite thing. Shelley was by far my favorite, she was a lot of fun and reading about her reminded me of reading something by Chelsea Handler.
The format, however, is going to be something you’ll either like or you won’t, plain and simple. The entire book is told through the story of emails – to Renee, her friends, dudes she is dating, etc. I realized about three emails in that I get bored with my own email conversations with people I actually know, so it doesn’t bode well for a book when I have that problem with my own personal life. I think I would have liked this a lot better if it were some emails and some more traditional book format. Like, some stuff we get to see in real time, so to speak, and other things we could see through email. So I take this as a lesson for myself – probably don’t read something in non-traditional format in the future!
As for the plot, I liked it overall, until the end anyway. I had a little inkling as to what may end up happening, and I was a little disappointed that I got it right. Which is also amusing – I can’t ever figure out a mystery, but something like this just calls to me! I guess I just felt like the major problem Renee encountered was so not a big deal, and I probably would have burst out laughing if I had found myself in her situation. The resolution to that was alright, but also felt a little rushed. Given what we, and Renee, had invested in this online dating adventure, I would have liked to see a little bit more to the book. While Renee was the main character, there were a few stories that I would have liked to see the end to, so maybe another twenty or so pages would have satisfied me.
The book is really relevant for life as we know it, which makes it fun and I think this could turn into an interesting movie if it were ever an option. It was a good first try, I’ll be curious to see what the author comes up with next…hopefully in a format that is more to my liking.
Read this book if: This was entertaining and I think it would be a good pool/beach read for the summer. Definitely something that takes your mind off your life for a few hours!
My Rating: 2.5/5 – Did I fall asleep?
