Review: Love and Miss Communication by Elyssa Friedland

Screens are ubiquitous. Technology has taken over every corner of most of our lives. Every one of our fingers and thumbs are flying as we text and email our days away. We are so plugged in that you can't go anywhere without seeing people on smart phones or computers, glued to the screen as actual life flies on past without our noticing. And because smart phones and computers with their apps and their enticing websites have become such an important part of our lives, giving them up is almost completely inconceivable. My family spends the best part of the summer in a place where we cannot play on screens: there is no internet connection available in the cottage, cell phones get one bar (if that), and the three television stations come in poorly through static and snow like we're living in the 1960s. Even there though we are not entirely unplugged because we can go into town and plug in (we know all the public hotspots) if we need or want to. But there's definitely something to be said for living without and experiencing real life going on all around you. In Elyssa Friedland's fun novel, Love and Miss Communication, main character Evie Rosen gives up all screens for a year and her life changes immeasurably.

Evie's life isn't entirely the way she'd like it but it's better than it is about to become. She's convinced that she's about to become partner in her law firm but she and her long time boyfriend broke up when she gave him the ultimatum that she wanted to get married like all of her close friends. A nice and promising blind date goes quickly south when Evie admits to having Googled her date. When she finally gets called in front of the partners at the office, it isn't to offer her the partnership she's worked so long and hard for, it's to fire her for her excessive emailing and web surfing on company time, a problem the extent to which she had no idea she had. Then she finds out through her excessive Facebook stalking that her commitment-phobic ex has gone and gotten married. It all of a sudden seems to her that he wasn't against marriage, just against marriage with her. Insta-connection and technology are ruining her life so she comes up with the idea of going off of them, completely. How does life unfold when you aren't glued to a screen? Evie needs to find out and to reconnect with her own core self.

When Evie disconnects, her character comes into sharper focus and in some ways that's good and in others, it's bad. Her envy of her friends' marriages and children becomes pretty crystal clear although it doesn't show her in the best light. And being unplugged makes her look at the way in which she might have been her own worst enemy in her relationship, choosing to stay with a man who had made his wishes known up front and sabotaging her own dreams for certainty and the easy contentment of being able to click the box on Facebook that says "In a relationship." Being unplugged in today's world means often being out of the loop and Evie discovers this as well, showing her that, once her self-imposed year is up, moderation is a reasonable plan and that forsaking technology entirely is doing her no favors either. As Friedland shows, technology can over take everything else in our world, making it impossible for us to experience the joy of just living in the moment, but if used carefully, it can also enhance life and keep us connected in ways that aren't so harmful as well. Evie may not be entirely changed by the end, still anxiously waiting for that expected proposal, but this is a light, fun, and timely look at our lives today, on screen and off.

For more information about Elyssa Friedland and the book, check out her website, like her Facebook page,, follow her on Twitter. Takes a look at the book's Goodreads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.