Thursday, August 26, 2010

tweet heart

Welcome to Twitter! Let the boy-stalking (ahem, following!) begin."
So begins this novel told entirely in e-mails, blogs and tweets between four high school friends at a prep school in the Carolinas as they navigate through spring semester of their junior year.
Claire (ClaireRBear) has been crushing on her school's most popular jock JD forever, although he doesn't know she exists. When JD(TopofGame17) starts following Claire on Twitter, she's really happy, but also confused, since in person he acts totally different.
Claire's best friend Lottie likes…well…everyone. Her username isn't "Lots0love" for nothing. Claire's guy friends, Bennett and Will, are both the geeky science fiction movie buff and video game type, although Bennett (KingofSlack) is several factors more annoying about it than quiet and sensitive Will (WiseOneWP).
When Claire starts to get suspicious about the difference between JD's entertaining and flirtatious tweets and his boring conversations in real life, something that started out innocent is suddenly looking like a matchmaking disaster…
At first, reading a bunch of tweeted conversations between characters was confusing to me, but as I got to know the characters and their intertwining stories, the format didn't matter as much anymore. The author included a few formatting features that make the conversations easier to follow, including having the characters' profile icons appear next to each tweet, setting private conversations apart in a blue outline, reprinting the date/time information and telling the story in chronological order, and making sure to include blog and email headers to give everything extra context. That said, this novelty format was still harder to just relax and read than a regular novel.
For a very modern take on high school relationships, check out Tweet Heart (a novel in e-mails, blogs and tweets) by Elizabeth Rudnick!
264 pages

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