Welcome to this weeks book review. The book of the week is Attachments by Rainbow Rowell. When I review books I try not to give away too much of what has happened especially if its a good book because I do want people to read it. So this review is more of my thoughts on the book while reading it and what I got out of the prose itself.
On to the review:
Attachments by Rainbow Rowell
Rainbow Rowell
Per Goodreads
“Hi, I’m the guy who reads your e-mail, and also, I love you . . . ”
Beth Fremont and Jennifer Scribner-Snyder know that somebody is monitoring their work e-mail. (Everybody in the newsroom knows. It’s company policy.) But they can’t quite bring themselves to take it seriously. They go on sending each other endless and endlessly hilarious e-mails, discussing every aspect of their personal lives.
Meanwhile, Lincoln O’Neill can’t believe this is his job now- reading other people’s e-mail. When he applied to be “internet security officer,” he pictured himself building firewalls and crushing hackers- not writing up a report every time a sports reporter forwards a dirty joke.
When Lincoln comes across Beth’s and Jennifer’s messages, he knows he should turn them in. But he can’t help being entertained-and captivated-by their stories.
By the time Lincoln realizes he’s falling for Beth, it’s way too late to introduce himself.
What would he say . . .
Ah I loved Attachments by Rainbow Rowell! This is only my second Rowell read and it did not disappoint. I know I gave it four stars but that was because a book has to really impress me to get a full 5 star credit. It came close though I will tell you that much. But to earn that extra star it takes a lot.
The book plain and simple read like a good romantic comedy. I absolutely love the point of view from which it was written. I tend to really love books that give a different perspective and this was one of those books. Without giving away too much, we are introduced to some of the main characters through email. The scene is set in a newsroom in 1999. It is essentially the comedic love story of Beth, who is a movie critic and Lincoln who works in the IT department and who sneakily (?) monitors conversations between Beth and her freind Jennifer. While this could have easily been considered creepy, it came across as endearing and really tugged on the emotional heartstrings of the reader. I loved that Lincoln fell for Beth through her emails and not in person. It was as though she was writing love letters him without knowing it. I was intrigued and happy when she herself started to fall for her ‘cute’ IT guy. It was like an old love story devoid of all the mianstream social media and typical communication. Although it was 1999, which in retrospectwasn’t that long ago, it kind of felt like a trip back in time to when people fell in love simply and without complication … and without meeting.
Rowell did a great job of developing the three main characters, Lincoln, Beth and Jennifer. I loved Lincoln. He was a bit stereotypical but I loved him. I have a habit of really getting into characters and I found myself rooting for him even though, lets be honest, intercepting personal emails is questionable at best. I also just loved Beth and Jennifer and more importantly their friendship and their banter.Their characters and stories were really developed by the reader, like Lincoln, through reading their personal e-mails back and forth and personally, I think that is genius. Some of those emails had me cracking up. I love that Rowell even developed some of the side characters like Doris and Lincoln’s mom and we fell in love with them as well.
My main critique would be that although I loved Lincoln, I would have preferred perhaps if he wasn’t the stereotypical IT guy i.e socially awkward, 28-year-old, who hadn’t had a girlfriend since his high school relationship failed at 19. I do think however that what we have of Lincoln was developed so well that I was able to overlook this. Still, typical stereotypes tend to irk me a bit when reading. Personal preference. Also I would have liked just a little more at the end to glimpse into their blooming love story!
All in all though I would definitely recommend Attachments by Rainbow Rowell. Its a good one! And the author herself writes so well that I most certainly plan to be reading more of her.
“Every woman wants a man who’ll fall in love with her soul as well as her body.”
“I’d know you in the dark,” he said. “From a thousand miles away. There’s nothing you could become that I haven’t already fallen in love with.”
“Wasn’t hitting bottom the thing you had to do to knock some sense into yourself? Wasn’t hitting bottom the thing that showed you which way was up?”
An Aussie author 🙂
