Review: Let’s Get Textual by Teagan Hunter
Sometimes you don't want angst. You don't want miscommunication dragging on for 200 pages, devastating heartbreak or characters making you want to throw your Kindle across the room.
Sometimes you just want two people who genuinely like each other, have fantastic chemistry and make you smile like an idiot while you're reading.
Let’s Get Textual was exactly that kind of book for me. Delia is a 21-year-old college senior studying journalism when she receives a text from a stranger. That stranger is Zach, a 25-year-old app developer who is apparently incapable of simply accepting that he has the wrong number and moving on with his life like a normal person. Instead, they keep talking and thank goodness they do.
Their random conversation quickly turns into an ongoing stream of jokes, sarcasm, flirting and increasingly ridiculous messages. Before either of them really knows what's happening, they're looking forward to those little notifications appearing on their phones. What I loved was how believable their connection felt.
They're not instantly declaring themselves soulmates. They just discover that they have the same sense of humour and genuinely enjoy talking to one another. That friendship builds first, and the attraction follows very naturally.
I loved Zach. Our first introduction to him is entirely through his messages, and somehow Teagan manages to give him a really strong personality before we ever properly meet him.
He's confident, funny, nerdy, kind, and knows exactly who he is. He's also refreshingly straightforward. There's no need for ridiculous games or pretending he doesn't care.
And yes, he's hot. Hot nerdy app developer with a wicked sense of humour? I'm listening.
The best thing about Zach, though, is how well he matches Delia's energy. She throws sarcasm at him and rather than being offended or confused, he throws it straight back.
Delia is just as much fun as Zach and she is equally easy to like. She's recently ended a relationship, but thankfully we don't have to wade through mountains of ex-boyfriend drama. The relationship simply wasn't right anymore, and now she's getting on with her final year of college and figuring out what comes next.
She's snarky, quirky and has just enough sass to keep Zach on his toes. She also feels like someone you'd actually want to be friends with. That's probably what I enjoyed most about both characters. They don't feel like they're performing for the sake of creating funny moments. Their humour feels natural to who they are. I could genuinely believe these two people would spend hours sending increasingly stupid messages back and forth.
One of my favourite types of romance is when I can believe that the couple would still choose to spend time together even if you removed the sexual attraction. Zach and Delia absolutely have that. They're lovers, but they also feel like best friends. They make each other laugh. They understand each other's weirdness. They can be completely ridiculous together, but they can also have proper conversations when they need to.
Most importantly, all that chemistry they've developed through their phones actually translates when they finally spend time together in real life. I think that's where a texting romance could very easily fall apart. Thankfully, this one doesn't.
A large portion of Let's Get Textual is told through messages between Zach and Delia, and I loved the format. Text-message romances can get cheesy very quickly, particularly when you're painfully aware that an author is trying to write how they think people text. That wasn't the case here. The messages are quick, funny and flirty without feeling too forced, and they're balanced with enough face-to-face interaction that the book never feels like you're just scrolling through someone else's phone.
It also solved something that would normally bother me about this book and thats we only get Delia's POV. I'm usually a dual-POV girl. I want inside everyone's head. Give me all the thoughts and feelings! But surprisingly, I didn't really miss Zach's POV here.
Because so much of the relationship develops through their conversations, Zach still gets plenty of opportunity to show us who he is. It doesn't feel like we're watching Delia fall for some mysterious character whose feelings we can't understand.
There really isn't a huge amount of drama in Let's Get Textual, and that's part of why I enjoyed it so much. It's light. It's fluffy. It's funny. There were so many moments where I realised I was sitting there smiling at my book because of something ridiculous Zach or Delia had said.
Even the secondary characters add to the humour rather than feeling like they're just hanging around waiting to set up another book. The pacing worked, the writing was easy to fly through, and most importantly, the humour didn't feel forced.
Let's Get Textual isn't trying to be a deeply emotional romance that destroys you and puts you back together again.
I believed that a random wrong-number text could turn into another message, then another, until suddenly this stranger had become the person you couldn't wait to hear from.
Add in a hot nerd, plenty of sarcasm, low drama and one scene-stealing baby goat, and you've got an easy, feel-good romance that was exactly what I wanted it to be.
And considering this is only book one in the Texting series, I'm definitely keen to see what comes next.
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