Tweeting

Daisy is a dedicated marketing manager with a specialty in social media that carries over into her personal life. To wit, girlfriend is one of those Instagram every meal and beverage with no fewer than three hashtag millennials everyone complains about. She sends a funny, if risqué, tweet that is posted to a client’s account by mistake.

Daisy’s sister takes advantage of Daisy’s resulting unemployment to suggest a digital detox/housework holiday fixing up a property in rural England where it will be nearly impossible to get a cell signal. Withdrawal drives Daisy into some desperate situations, often in front of grumpy local Jack who she also finds oddly compelling and romance ensues.

It Started With A Tweet is a solid book, and I’m struggling to sort out what I didn’t like about it. There’s no terrible grammar or sentence structure, the characters are, for the most part, inoffensive people. While Daisy is tiresome in terms of how far she’s willing to go to find a way to get online, nothing really strains credulity. I just… wasn’t interested in this fictionalized account of “what if Justine Sacco found love after that whole fiasco blew up”. It took me until the scene at the end, in which Daisy finds herself wishing her friends would put their phones down and engage in conversation, to realize what was bothering me: the book is judging pre-incident Daisy. The author is not on her side, so how can I be? I can cheer for Daisy to learn to live without her phone always by her side, but I need more circumspection from her about it. Daisy’s realization that her friends are shallow, image-obsessed twits is a cheap way to “show” character growth.

I read this months ago and needed to give it a few months before revisiting for the purpose of this review. I find that the time didn’t do much to improve my impression of the book. It’s not a bad book; it’s just not one that I imagine every pressing a friend or acquaintance to read.

I received a complimentary copy of It Started With A Tweet via NetGalley in exchange for this review.