by Cavanaugh Lee

Simon & Schuster, $23.99, 317 pages

Plain and simple, you can’t marry your best guy friend. You can’t date the guy who’s stalking you on E-Harmony. You can check out the cater-waiter – maybe he’s available. Save as Draft, publicized as “a vicarious thrill” follows the rise and fall of Izzy’s engagement to her BFF entirely via email, texts, Facebook posts and Twitter feeds. OMG! This is, at first, off-putting, but quickly the eyes skips over the date, time and heading info to get to the newsy, inter-person bombshells one can drop in 144 characters or less.

Author Cavanaugh Lee presents a seemingly autobiographical picture of how little one can say when there is so much to tell. With a clever manipulation of time the reader is brought into the story with the sweet anticipation of “happily ever after” told mostly during company time on company email. The most personal messages are those that go too far and expose too much, and so get saved as draft pending future action. I won’t say that I couldn’t put it down, but I had no trouble picking it up.

Reviewed by Bryan Burch