SAVE AS DRAFT

Lee, a former actress turned lawyer who in real life found love in a Southern city, patterns her central character, Izabell Chin, and the story line on her own experiences.

This tale of Izabell’s love life is chronicled through a series of e-mails and text messages, mostly exchanged between Izabell, Peter and her inner circle of friends, Elizabeth, Annette and Brooke. Izabell’s story commences when she enrolls in a popular online-dating site and finds Martin, with whom she shares a love of movies and other mutual likes. But when Peter, her best friend from when they interned together at an Atlanta law firm, reappears, Izzy decides to take a chance and see if friendship and her attraction to Peter can lead to something deeper. They soon connect as Izzy hoped, but life and their relationship become complicated as her friends deal with their own divorces, marriages and, in buddy Annette’s case, a slew of entirely inappropriate would-be suitors piling up from her personal foray into online dating. Also in the picture: Izzy’s and Peter’s parents, a demanding, hateful and downright unsympathetic slave driver of a boss, Rose, the ever-hopeful wannabe suitor, Marty, and one of Peter’s old girlfriends. The heart of the story centers not on the e-mails sent, but those not sent. Those e-mails were written and then saved as drafts (hence the title), and that’s where the characters reveal their true feelings. Lee has a genuine knack for crafting light fiction and the book is an ideal carry-along on any e-mail addict’s plane ride. But for those not enamored of electronic communication, the e-mail and text approach may prove more annoying than riveting.

A quick, fun debut novel involving commitment avoidance, meet-cutes and falling in love in the electronic age.