Full Disclosure: I am online friends with the author of this book. We met when she taught a workshop I took on creative nonfiction writing for academics.
Hereās the publisherās description:
Sydney Ciara Warren is excited as she starts her first year of college, but also nervous. Despite her interests in writing and fashion, she has no idea what path will ultimately be right for her. As she tries to figure out her place on campus and in the world, she finds solace in blogging about her life, putting together outfits with meaning*, and spending time online.
Itās within the digital space that she connects with someone who goes by YoungPrinceX. She may not know āXā in real life, but that doesnāt stop her from developing a crush on him. Except she’s also navigating her first romantic relationship, with a sweet boy on campus named Xavier (who maybe could be X???).
Can Sydney Ciara not only make it through her first semester, but thrive in real life, as much as she seems to be thriving online?*
Itās an oft-repeated piece of writing advice that you should write the book that only you can write, and with Love in 280 Characters or Less, Dr. Ravynn K. Stringfield has done exactly that. This is an epistolary novel for the digital age, made up of blog posts, tweets, text exchanges, and emails. Our main character, Sydney Ciara Warren, is a freshman at Coastal Virginia University, a fictionalized public university near Virginia Beach. Syd has been writing online for an age and is keenly aware of how digitally mediated her experiences and relationships are.
Dr. Stringfield herself blogged her way through grad school and lived for years on Twitter (thatās where most of our getting to know each other happened). Her scholarship is deeply entwined with Black girlhood, girl culture in media, fantasy, and comics. All of that comes through in Sydney Ciaraās experiences in a way that makes Sydās understanding of her writing, both public and private, and her navigation of relationships richly textured. There are authors who would write something like this and it would feel hollow, like a person who never wrote a blog post or tweet trying to do what they think would appeal to readers who had a digital adolescence. Dr. Stringfield instead has given us an incredibly rich portrait of a young woman navigating life and love in the digital age. While the specifics of the technology Syd uses are linked to a particular moment in time, this tightrope walk of IRL-or-not is something all of us, but especially people coming of age, will be living for the foreseeable future.
Like Dr. Stringfieldās debut, Love Requires Chocolate, this is marketed as a romance but is more about one young womanās transition to adulthood than it is about one particular romantic relationship. Most of the book involves Syd connecting with people on campus including a girl with incredible style and perfect baby hairs, a boy with a killer smile and ambitions of being a diplomat, and a PhD candidate teaching assistant who acts as a mentor and supports Syd through some of her most difficult moments. Through all of this relationship-building, she writes about her life, texts her best friend who is at a college a three-hour drive away, and navigates her momās ambitions for her to be pre-law when sheās not sure thatās what she wants at all.
Syd is thrust into the online spotlight when she writes about an incident where her best friendās roommate is followed home from a party and arrested for breaking and entering when he accidentally uses the wrong card to try to swipe into the dorm. In sharing the information she heard from witnesses and the young manās fellow students, she receives messages of gratitude and solidarity from other Black college students and messages of hate from people who refuse to believe that the young man could possibly be anything other than a criminal.
Syd has to ask herself, is she an activist writer? Is it possible to divorce the political from her writing? In the face of the realities she and her fellow Black college students experience, can she write only about fashion without bringing politics into it? All of this figuring herself out is entangled with her relationships with her best friend Malcolm, her boyfriend Xavier, her sister Janaya, her friend Angie, and her mentor Zion.
I love this book. Iād recommend it to anybody who enjoys coming-of-age stories and especially anybody who is interested in how our online and offline identities intersect. The publisher says itās perfect for fans of The Neighbor Favor by Kristina Forest and I think thatās a good comp. I could see Sydney growing up into someone like Lily, the main character in that book, and they both tackle that online-IRL spectrum of experience.
Book: Love in 280 Characters or Less
Author: Ravynn K. Stringfield
Publisher: Macmillan
Publication Date: April 15, 2025
Pages: 320
Age Range: Young Adult
Source of Book: ARC via NetGalley, Public library
