Save As Draft by Cavanaugh Lee
Girl meets boy online. Girl makes out with best guy friend. Girl has amazing first date with boy. Girl must choose. Girl doesn’t want to choose. Girl emails her friends for advice.
A love triangle evolving over e-mails, text, and Facebook messages that makes you wonder if the things we leave unsaid- or rather unsent- could change the story of our lives.
We don’t see every single email between every person in the book, the author chooses to reveal just enough to move the story along. And when people actually meet in person or talk on the phone, we only hear about it later if they happen to mention it in their email. The story is a bit asynchronous – the closest we get to a real time conversation is when characters text back and forth. The title of the novel indicates the very best part—the reader is privy to the emails that characters write to each other but do NOT send – the Save as Draft option in email that lets people vent their frustrations or blurt out their true feelings but then file it away without letting the other person read it. Of course, the things they almost say to each other as the relationships and the love triangle progresses are more revealing than the things they end up actually sending once their emotions are under control.
I’ve always been a fan of the quirky epistolary novel (From
Pamela by Samuel Richardson to
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn) and I am drawn to this non-traditional way of story telling using the communication of modern times and modern romances. I would recommended
Save as Draft to anyone who thinks the premise sounds interesting.
I read the ARC, 324 pages
