Tell me there’s a book based on You’ve Got Mail and I’m pretty much going to read it immediately. Which is what I did with Alex, Approximately and I found it UTTERLY DELIGHTFUL.
(Sidenote: I don’t know of any other books based on You’ve Got Mail/The Shop Around the Corner/Parfumerie but if you do, why haven’t you told me about them yet?)
I digress. Back to Alex, Approximately.
Bailey is a classic film loving teen who moves across the country to live with her dad, having grown apart from her mother, for reasons we will discover much later. She’s been having an online flirtation with a boy named Alex, who just HAPPENS to live in the same town she’s just moved to. Instead of telling him she’s now living there, despite the fact that he’s been hounding her to come visit for an upcoming film festival, she gets to sleuthing to try to find him in the tiny town that’s now her home.
We, the readers, could tell her that is a not-so-great-and-kind-of-stalkery idea, but…you know…teens. She wouldn’t have listened anyway.
Meanwhile, Bailey gets a job at an old timey museum, becomes friends with her charming coworker, Grace, and begins arguing regularly with the hot security guard there, Porter.
I’m sure we can all see where this is going, particularly if you’ve ever seen You’ve Got Mail.
SIDEBAR THE SECOND: If you haven’t watched You’ve Got Mail, you simply must stop reading this immediately and go watch it. I’ll wait.
WASN’T IT SO GREAT?
It’s not as good as Sleepless in Seattle, and certainly has its faults, but I have seen it approximately 800 bajillion times because everyone in it is a sweet fluffy marshmallow of a person and I just want all of them to be so, so happy. Also there’s a dog in it.
Anyway, back to the book.
If I have one complaint, it’s that the book doesn’t follow the You’ve Got Mail storyline closely enough, and Bailey and Porter don’t hate each other for NEARLY long enough before moving into not-hate. Still, though, I’m always on board for a case of hidden identities or people-hating-each-other-NO-WAIT-they-love-each-other storylines and this had both. So no complaints there.
My other (small and not really a) complaint is that both Bailey and Porter had huge, gargantuan tragedies in their pasts, two very unlikely incidents, and it seemed a bit out there for a YA rom com. Still, it doesn’t detract from the story at all, so again, no more complaints.
(I just contradicted the shit out of myself. No, I don’t care. Moving along.)
Read this if: You’ve already watched You’ve Got Mail today and you need MORE.
