Point, Click, Love by Molly Shapiro

In Molly Shapiro’s fun and sexy debut novel, four women try to sort through the wild and complicated world of text messaging, status updates, and other high-speed connections.

Best friends and fellow midwesterners Katie, Annie, Maxine, and Claudia are no strangers to dealing with love and relationships, but with online dating and social networking now in the mix, they all have the feeling they’re not in Kansas anymore. Katie, a divorced mother of two, secretly seeks companionship through the Internet only to discover that the rules of the dating game have drastically changed. Annie, a high-powered East Coast transplant, longs for a baby, yet her online search for a sperm donor is not as easy—or anonymous—as she anticipates. Maxine, a successful artist with a seemingly perfect husband, turns to celebrity gossip sites to distract herself from her less-than-ideal marriage. And Claudia, tired of her husband’s obsession with Facebook, finds herself irresistibly drawn to a handsome co-worker. As these women navigate the new highs and lows of the digital age, they each find that their wrong turns lead surprisingly to the right click and, ultimately, the connection they were seeking.

Being of an age where I have seen the internet go from non-existence to an almost necessary part of life has been interesting to say the least.  So it goes without saying that I found the premise of this book fascinating.   Unfortunately, I found the story to be disappointing. 

There seemed to be an overall disdain of the internet which gave the book a feeling of overwhelming self-righteousness.  The message in the end is less prejudiced, but by the time I got to the end I felt that I had been beaten over the head about the evils of social media so much that there was nothing that could salvage the story for me.    

Usually, if I don’t enjoy the story of a book, I will at least like the characters.  Regrettably, that was not the case here.  Each character’s redeeming qualities were overshadowed by their less enviable characteristics.  It also didn’t help that the writing style felt almost clinical.  As if I were watching it from far away rather than truly getting into the head of the character.  And if you can’t feel personable with the character then how can you sympathize with them? 

Sadly, in the end, this book was not for me.

Nat