Neel ShahBesprekingen

My boss asked me to read this book and tell her what I thought.

It claim's to be a more realistic look at the dating world through Emails and Text message format,
but it still seemed very romantic comedy movie type to me.

Still a fun, very light summer beach read. Only took me 1 day to read it.

I liked the concept, the entire story takes place in emails and text messages.

It tells the story of a relationship between a man and a woman from their first email exchange. You read shat they write to each other and then you see another layer. You are simultaneously reading what she's saying to her best friend about him and you're reading what he says to his best friend about her.

So, interesting concept. The reader knows more about the relationship than the couple does because they're much better being honest with their best friends than they are with each other.

I didn't love it. The book was too short. I started the book at most three hours ago and finished it already. Is that enough time invested to really care about the couple in the book? It wasn't for me.

This was a great and so very truthful. I love how it is written, all emails and texts. The best part (and worst part) is that I have been there and so I was completely able to relate to it. It made me literally laugh out loud because I have sent some of the exact texts, almost verbatim to my best friend. I highly recommend this book! It is a look inside the dating minds of both men and women and the friends that stand beside them.

A gigantic winner in epistolary (format is letters/emails/texts/tweets) novels, this one takes both sides in the Madeline and Elliot romance saga. Emails between the budding couple and their skeptical friends are hilariously true-to-life and big fun. Perfect quick beach or snowbound read!

I read this as a regular print book, in our Pop Reads collection so I'm surprised there are only 2 copies here. Spoilers abound.

I didn't like this as much as I expected. I always expect to like books like this a lot. It is a concept book, since there are four correspondents and they don't all know what the other is writing. The other half of the romance doesn't know what the best friend on the other side is saying. And the main parts are written by two different people. So one good thing is that the voices are different. But the story wasn't very interesting.
Also, there were a couple of places where I couldn't figure out what a phrase meant.

Read it in one sitting. It was light, interesting-ish, but kind of a novelty read. I'm glad I didn't skip the authors' note at the beginning as I easily could have because it helps put the rest of the book in perspective.

A modern day spin on what happens after boy meets girl. Written entirely in emails and text messages, it's easy to finish in one sitting.½

Boy meets girl…and the rest is history, right? Well, Elliot, a chef, meets Madeline at his restaurant opening in New York City’s West Side. Their romance unfolds in a series of emails and texts to each other and their respective best friends, David and Emily; who only see one side of the story. With constant contact through phones and Facebook stalking, relationships aren’t as easy as they used to be and Elliot and Madeline’s rollercoaster relationship is all too real.
Contemporary and very true to reality, I felt like I was getting a chance to snoop through a friend’s phone to see all of their dirty little relationship secrets. Touching, hilarious, quirky and gritty, Read Bottom Up took me through all the facets of a relationship. With just the e-mails and texts, this was an extremely quick read, but engaging. Unfortunately, we do just dig into the relationship and there is not a lot of background information on anyone, but some of that does come out in the correspondence. I actually felt a closer connection to Emily, Madeline’s best friend who is level headed and dishes out advice. I also enjoyed the collaboration of the two authors that gave a fresh voice to each of their characters. Overall, a unique, modern and light romance that made for a quick read.

This book was received for free in return for an honest review.½

Read Bottom Up is a modern day romance; boy and girl meet, and much of their relationship takes place in emails and text messages. The authors wrote in the Authors' Note that they wanted to see a more realistic modern dating experience in a novel. So they wrote it.

But they added a twist. Neel and Skye each wrote as their corresponding character- Elliot, a hip restaurant owner who just went through a bad breakup, and Madeline, who works for a publisher marketing cookbooks and searching for a real, fulfilling relationship. There are two other characters in the book- Elliot's best friend David, and Madeline's best friend Emily, an elementary school teacher.

Neel wrote his character's emails and text messages to Madeline and David and Skye wrote Madeline's emails and text messages to Elliot and Emily. The twist is that Neel never saw Madeline's correspondence to Emily and Skye never saw Elliot's correspondence to David until the novel was finished.

It's a clever concept and one that works beautifully, giving the novel a realistic feeling. Even though I am older than the target market for this book, I loved it. It's a Sex and the City for this generation, where every piece of their life could be played out on social media for all to parse and ponder.

Elliot is witty and charming, and maybe just a little bit flaky. When Madeline arrives at their second date, she finds an entire table filled with Elliot's friends, and she hardly speaks to Elliot all night. What does this mean? She turns to Emily for advice.

They have been dating for awhile, sleeping at each other's apartments, spending most of their time together, when Elliot informs her that he will be spending an entire week in Vermont at the wedding festivities of a college buddy. (I guess that's how it works today, weddings are a weeklong process.)

Elliot doesn't ask Madeline to accompany him, and while trolling on Elliot's friends' Instagram accounts, she sees that Elliot's ex-girlfriend is also at the wedding. What does this mean? Again, she turns to Emily.

Elliot spends much time sharing his thoughts about Madeline with David. There are times when he doesn't understand why Madeline is angry with him, and he wonders if they are truly compatible.

Read Bottom Up is a fun, quick, addictive read. You feel like you know these characters, and for a minute I expect to see them turn up somewhere on my Facebook news feed. There is a real twist at the end of the story, one I did not see coming, but enjoyed immensely.

Life is different for every generation. My generation has come to the computer as adults and while digital media has assumed a huge part of our lives, we didn't have it for many of the most pivotal times of our lives. But young adults today have it in every aspect of life. They have it for the big things and the little ones too. They have it to make major announcements or to scrutinize the tiniest detail. This utter pervasiveness means that almost everything is documented in their lives in ways that they never have been before. In Neel Shah and Sky Chatham's quirky modern epistolary novel inspired by and updated to fit with the digital media of our age, Read Bottom Up, the entire life cycle of a two twenty-something's relationship is laid out in email and text, not only from their perspectives but from those of their closest friends as well.

Elliott is a chef. Madeline works for a cookbook publisher. The two of them meet at the soft opening for a new restaurant and after Elliott gets Madeline's email, they start an email flirtation that blooms into a full scale relationship. The tale of their relationship plays out in their emails and texts to each other and in the side emails and texts they share with David and Emily, their respective best friends. Each phase of their relationship is played out on screens, from first date to the intoxication of early relationship to misunderstandings to fights to conflicted feelings. And that's just between Elliott and Madeline. David and Emily are also present in the relationship, there to offer advice, to help tease out the hidden meaning or intentions behind seemingly innocuous comments, and just generally to prop up their respective friends when things don't seem to be going quite like the fairy tales.

The way this novel was written, with the authors writing emails to each other but being completely in the dark about the side emails written between the friends, gives this a real ring of truth about relationships now. It definitely has the feel of twenty-something dating life for sure. The emails and texts range from funny to terse, casual to intense. While this method of communication highlights the insecurities of the characters, it does make it hard to fully flesh out the characters since they are on their best behavior, guarding their emotions, and projecting their best presence to their partner. Only in the side conversations with their friends do their individual histories and personalities occasionally shine through which makes it hard for the reader to get to know the characters very well or to feel invested in their relationship together. But it definitely accurately captures eight or so months of twenty-first century love and relationship, the drama, the cyber stalking, the apathy, and the uncertainty of it all in its pages. In general, the novel was a quick, short read without too much meat on its bones but fun and light entertainment for all that.

Everybody knows that when you're dating, there are four people in a relationship: you, your significant other, and the best friends of each of you. And so emails get forwarded between you and your friend as you worry about (or celebrate) each tiny detail. In this epistolary novel, two twenty-somethings meet, flirt, become close, and grow distant ... all while confiding in their best friend at each stage of the game. Recommended. (76)