17 March 2016

Review #370: #PleaseRetweet by Emily Benet



My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“Tweeting is talking into the abyss, filling a void in your life by avoiding real human contact.”


----Jarod Kintz



Emily Benet, an English writer, has penned a heart-warming tale about twitter and it's minions in her book,#PleaseRetweet, that narrates the story of a woman who manages the C-listed celebs' twitter accounts and that's her full-time job. This story revolves around her life how twitter and celebs' lives dominate hers thereby forcing her to alienate her close friends, herself and her family.





Synopsis:

Social media whizz kid, May Sparks has landed her dream job. Well, not quite, but the salary is great and all May has to do is handle the online profiles of Z – list celebrities who have the tendency to say inappropriate things. Easy, right? #wrong


May’s clients include an ex big brother star (who she's definitely not going to sleep with #neversaynever), a disgraced TV presenter (who wants May to sort out his marriage as well as his Twitter account), and a woman who once flashed her boobs on X-factor. They're all relying on her to turn them into stars. But they're not going to make her job easy.


As May is sucked further and further into her job she begins to lose her grip on real life. Her friends don’t ‘like’ her Facebook posts anymore and even her gorgeous neighbour, who once seemed to be on the same wavelength, criticises her career choice. Worse, May’s clients start getting trolled by an annoying tweep, who May happens to agree with.


Then May’s secret online identity is leaked, causing her to start trending on Twitter. It looks like the status update is over. Unless May can leave the superficial social media word behind and find her own voice again.



May Sparks has bagged the job of her dreams where she can flaunt her skills within 140 characters to keep people interested and to update about some celeb's mundane daily routine and at times maybe handling their crisis situations or bad rumors to give troubles at bay. Her high paid job gives her an almost grand lifestyle of her own, but what she doesn't realize that job could take control over her life. Things get worse when she romantically gets involved with a former Big Brother C-grade celeb contestant, Damian and worse when a talk show host-turned-writer wants her to reunite him with his estranged wife over Twitter. Her life shatters into pieces because of too much tweeting. Can she be able to make her friends and family to re-tweet her life yet one more time?

The story is extremely funny and realistic, and seriously I ha d no idea that celebs don't tweet for themselves, they hire people to do it. That's why I never follow any celebs over Twitter! I really don't trust their manipulative words. Sorry I'm diverting away from the review! Okay apart from this book being an eye-opener, it also harbors an engrossing story of woman in her late twenties whose life goes into downward spiral when she is hired to tweet for some celebs. One look at that apt and interesting book cover, I could not resist myself from opening the book and reading it in only one sitting.

Since the story features celebs so you can expect some crazy mind-F**King DRAMA that made me go ROFL most of the times. The author's writing style is sassy and eloquent and has been properly layered with funny anecdotes and with quite a number of LOL moments. The narrative is toned down to realistic and catchy with a really fast and edgy pacing. The story is so engaging that I could not turn my head away from the book till the last page and remained hooked on to it.

The characters are well-developed and each of them are layered with realism in their demeanor. The main character, our protagonist, May Sparks, is a real charm and the author has highlighted her with a bit of character -growth as she is constantly challenged with tricky situations. The grandeur of her charming and witticism is reflected within 140 characters. Her enthusiastic effort to save the celebs from the mean and cunning fandom gets too heavy on her life and that made me feel sorry for her. But what I did not like about her attitude is her indifference to the man who likes her in real. The supporting characters are as funny and well-crafted just like May.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book and anyone who is Twitter-obsessed must give it a read as the author silently screams her message that how too much of social media can have a negative impact on a human being's life.

Verdict: An arresting and hilarious light read that is perfect for the Twitter lovers!

Courtesy: Thanks to the author, Emily Benet, for giving me an opportunity to read and review this book.

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Author Info:
Hello! I'm a half-Spanish, half-Welsh, London-born writer now living on the beautiful island of Mallorca. Got it? Me neither. What matters is that wherever I've lived, my obsession with writing has followed! 
My debut book Shop Girl Diaries was commissioned and published by Salt Publishing after they spotted my weekly blog about working in my Mum's chaotic chandelier shop. Later, with director Chloe Thomas we wrote the script for a short film Shop Girl Blog which was filmed inside the shop starring Katy Wix (Not Going Out). It was selected for The London Short Film Festival 2014.
My Blog was winner of the
CompletelyNovel Author Blog Award 2010
I wrote my next novel Spray Painted Bananas on the online platform Wattpad. It reached over one million hits and led to me signing with MBA literary agency. It has since been published by Harper Collins under the new title The Temp.
 
I run social media workshops and my Blogging for Beginners ebook is available on kindle. I have written about the benefits of social media for writers for several publications including The New Writer, Mslexia, Writers' Hub, Litro,  Survival Guide to Journalism and  Publishing Talk, and lecture at universities and literary festivals. 

Since moving to Mallorca in May 2015, I've started writing for the travel magazine SeeMallorca. I'm looking forward to exploring the island, and I'll be sure to document my adventures on my blog too!
Visit her here


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