Lisa Becker - Click: an online love story

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.

Comment: I got interested in this book simply because of its graphic format. This is a story told only using emails and from that we get to understand everything, from characters' personalities to choices made. I wanted to read this one because I'm an usual fan of epistolary stories, where we only get the plot from reading though letters or emails. I was hoping for entertaining and I got it.

In this little book, we follow Renee Greene, she's staring about dating again after a bad breakup and her closest friends Mark and Shelley suggest online dating. Renee signs in for a Jewish online dating site in hopes to at least find someone her family would approve of in case they hit if off.

While using the site, Renee has the chance to meet several guys, some more interesting and sane than the others, and eventually that allows her to weight in what matters the most in a partner. But will Renee be ready to start something with a person she can only meet occasionally?

I think this book was short but cute. There isn't much to say about it, so I'll be quick in my comment.

In terms of writing, this is pretty basic, we really only have emails exchanged, no diary excerpts, no notes, no other source of text except the emails. Obviously, this makes it more difficult to fully grasp each character's personality and state of mind but it's enough to give us an idea.

Renee is a young woman, she turned 30 and she imagined she would have a different romantic life by this point. How I understood this, especially because the pressure put on young women is incredible when it comes to form a family. Renee knows something has to change and online dating is nowadays one of the means more people use to meet new people and to find the one, if he/she exists.

The fun part is that at first email it's not always easy to know what people really think or how they are in a real life situation. First dates count a lot, as does the idea "first impression matters". Renee meets several men, some more interesting than others but the fun part is how weird some of them are, which can't be too far from reality. I had fun reading about some of the guy's interests and ideas.

The characters in this book aren't totally developed, of course. We get to know Renee relatively well and the guy she ends up with here more or less. Renee's friends are fun enough, stereotyped a bit but that's to be expected in a story where we don't even see them interact. I do feel slightly annoyed at Shelley, she was characterized as the type of woman who dates and has very short physical relationships. It feels very demeaning to me.

I think this book shows a little part of online dating reality and for that, it's worth the try. But it's also fun at times and the end has a twist I didn't see coming. Now that some time has gone, I can almost  see how evident it might look but I admit I didn't think of it at the time. It made this a surprising book to me and for that alone, it was worth the time reading, which took em along one day. It's good enough to just relax and maybe to read between heavier readings.

I know that there are two more stories but by the blurbs they don't feel as interesting and I rather prefer to keep up the good impressions of this one.

Grade: 8/10