Any Dream Will Do - Maria Duffy (2011)

Jenny Breslin's drunken tweet inviting her three best Twitter pals to stay for a weekend in Dublin will change her life. Having spoken to them for a year she feels she knows them really well and what they know of her is almost true, except for the odd exaggeration and the old photo... Jenny starts to worry that her life will appear dull to Zahra, the celebrity make-up artist from London; Fiona the stay-at-home mum; and her closest Twitter pal Kerry, the Irish nurse. But as she meets her virtual friends she realises that not everything you see on Twitter is true. Once you get used to Jenny (she is a little intense at first) then you'll begin to really warm to her. The setting of this virtual meets actual life works really well with nothing being as it seems. And if you're a Twitter addict then you'll love it - it will make you look at who you tweet with in a whole other light! (AB)

Maria Duffy's debut novel Any Dream Will Do is about a woman who makes a life for herself on Twitter. The summary says: "'Tis the season to be jolly, except single Dubliner Jenny Breslin is feeling something a little closer to gloomy. Everything about her life - her boring job at the bank, the complete lack of romance - has been untouched by holiday magic, and she dreads the thought of spending yet another festive season with her larger-than-life mother and her new boyfriend. Thank God for Twitter, a place where there are always people ready and waiting to have a chat. She's even managed to make a couple of genuine friends there, even though she's never met them IRL (that's 'In Real Life' by the way). 'So who's on for a few days in Dublin? Would love to meet you all in person. I have a spare room in my house' - this drunken tweet to her Twitter pals changes Jenny's life forever. Before she knows it, she's counting down to a Christmas visit from London-native Zahra Burns, make-up artist to the stars; Fiona Lee, a stay-at-home mum from Galway, and nurse Lesley (the Twitter buddy Jenny feels closest to). Suddenly, Jenny becomes aware of how her life will appear to these strangers. In a word: Boring. It's easy enough to pretend that you're an exciting and sophisticated person when nobody can see you, but now Jenny's worried about being caught out in the occasional lies that she's told. All the more incentive to change her life for the better! But once her pals arrive, Jenny finds herself pining for the past and wondering if people are ever who they claim to be." Duffy, a self-confessed Twitter addict, writes for the Stars in the Twitterverse blog through Hello Magazine.

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