I liked this book, and it was a very fast read. There were plenty of things that worked in its favor, but, that said, I also found some problems with the storyline overall.Pros:
- I love it when a book isn't weighed down by pages and pages of prose. The relationship that builds between Mark and Abby is strictly via Tweets, which reads like very snappy dialogue. I'd say at least 2/3 of the book is Tweets, which meant the pages just kept flying by.
- The dialogue itself is smart and sassy. As a member of the Internet generation, I myself have built plenty of friendships and developed plenty of rapport online, strictly via the written word. I can well understand how Mark and Abby could feel the connection that they felt, without having ever met each other.
- I was surprised I came close to crying at certain poignant moments. Whoever thought 140 characters or less could bring tears to my eyes?
- After reading a couple of books with easily-cured, distracting editing issues, I was pleased to see that I didn't pick up any in this book. Thank goodness.
- The pop culture references are fun and current.
Cons:
- However, the pop culture references may have been a little overwhelming for me as a reader. I couldn't catch some of the more obscure references, which was a little distracting.
- I thought the ending was too abrupt. This is a book where I wanted desperately to know what happened AFTERWARD. I looked in vain for an epilogue and am now sitting here...wondering what became of Mark and Abby.
- I know this is a romantic novel based on Tweets, but I was STILL surprised by some unrealistic parts of the practical side of that. I was surprised by the gaps in time between their "meetings," and, since there's no way of checking whether a Twitter user is online at that time, their consistent availability to each other seemed unlikely via that medium (until Mark's revelation, I suppose).
- This is nitpicky, but as someone who's lived in New York for a while, I found some of the New York references a little weird. I would never call Grand Army Plaza "Grand Army Plaza" - rather, it's just 57th Street to me. I've eaten at Le Bernardin, and I'm curious if it really IS a publishing house expense account destination.
Overall, I would recommend this book as a fast and easy read, but I wish the author would write an epilogue for us to know where the couple is now.
Note that the publisher and Ms. Medeiros have a website with "Goodnight Tweetheart" freebies (including the pictures that the two of them share) at http://pages.simonandschuster.com/goodni...
