Every Conversation Matters (Especially the Wrong Ones!)

I did not pick Love Virtually by Daniel Glattauer because it was “important literature.”. I picked it because it was thin, funny-looking, and promised emails instead of emotions.

Big mistake.

The book begins with a typo. A wrong email. Two strangers- Emmi and Leo, start writing to each other because the internet, like destiny, has terrible spelling. What follows is not romance in the traditional sense. No dramatic entrances. No violins. Just emails. Short ones. Long ones. Clever ones. Dangerous ones.

I laughed a lot while reading it. That should have warned me.  Because this is the kind of book that smiles politely while rearranging your insides.

Emmi and Leo don’t fall in love loudly. They fall in love through punctuation. Through delayed replies. Through “I shouldn’t have written that” messages sent anyway. It felt familiar in a way I didn’t appreciate at the time. I told myself, Relax, it’s fiction.

It was not relaxing.

By the time I reached the end, I had started judging my own emails. Was I honest? Was I hiding? Was I typing to connect or to control the narrative? Love Virtually does that to you. It makes you suspicious of every “Hope you’re doing well.”

Naturally, I picked up the sequel.

Every Seventh Wave is what happens after the fantasy meets real life and immediately asks for a refund. The emails continue, but now there are consequences. The charm is still there, but so is discomfort. The book gently suggests that intimacy is easy online; responsibility is not.

This is where the comedy turns slightly wicked.  Because the second book doesn’t ask, Do they love each other?

It asks, What now?

And suddenly, every romantic email I had ever written stood up, cleared its throat, and asked the same question.

I didn’t just read these books. I started behaving like them.  I wrote longer emails. Then deleted them. Then rewrote them with fewer adjectives, more honesty, and just enough humour to soften the blow. I learned that silence can be louder than words, and words- when chosen carefully, can be devastating without being cruel.

Somewhere along the way, someone told me, “You think too much. You write like you’re in a novel.”

They meant it as a joke.

Here’s the plot twist: they were right.  These books didn’t make me romantic. They made me alert. They taught me that conversation is never innocent, that every message is a choice, and that intimacy is often disguised as casual typing at midnight.

The funniest part? I thought I was reading about two fictional people sending emails.  Turns out, the books were quietly reading me.  Every message I sent after that felt like it might end up as a chapter title. Every unsent email felt like a footnote. Love Virtually taught me how easy it is to connect. Every Seventh Wave taught me why that ease is dangerous.

I still love these books. But I don’t trust them.  They don’t comfort you.  They don’t promise happy endings.  They just hand you your own words back and say, Now live with them.  Which, honestly, is the rudest and most useful thing a book can do.

This blog post is part of ‘Blogaberry Dazzle’ hosted by Cindy D’Silva and Noor Anand Chawla.

This post is a part of ‘Plot Twist Blog Hop’ hosted by Manali Desai and Sukaina Majeed under #EveryConversationMatters blog hop series.