Spotlight Saturday "Attachments"

Attachments

This is the first book in my October Spotlight series on Rainbow Rowell.  Come back next Saturday for a review of "Eleanor & Park", her most well known title.

This book is darling.
I enjoyed it the first time I read it, and re-reading it recently, I realized that I adore this book.  I am a sucker for a good rom-com, and that is essentially what this is, in book form.  Not just any rom-com, though....a good one.  One with snark and pop culture references and characters you know in real life.

Beth and Jennifer work for a local Omaha, Nebraska newspaper, The Courier. They are best friends, and spend quite a bit of their day conversing via email through the office intranet.  Its important to note that this book takes place in 1999.  While that is only 15 years ago chronologically, it feels like centuries, technologically speaking.  This book wouldn't take place in 2014, because cell phones and texting and Facebook have made the central dilemma to this book obsolete.  Yet here we are, visiting Jennifer and Beth in 1999.  Beth is in a long term relationship with a hot, aloof musician.  Jennifer is married and terrified of becoming pregnant.  They have a wonderful report and I found myself laughing out loud as I read their email correspondence.

Lincoln has been hired by their newspaper to monitor all intra-office emails.  It is his job to make sure nothing of "questionable" nature is being discussed on office time. When he was hired by The Courier to be the security officer in their IT department, he had no idea his actual job would essentially be snooping into other people's business.  Yet a job is a job, so night after night, he reads other people's emails, and as Jennifer and Beth's letters pop into his WebFence folder, he starts feeling real affection for these women he's never met.  Particularly the witty and kind-hearted Beth.

We meet lots of colorful peripheral characters throughout the course of this book.  Lincoln has a bit of a "failure to launch" situation and is still living at home with his over-bearing mother.  His older sister, Eve, is constantly trying to force him out of the nest.  He has a handful of friends, one ridiculous ex-girlfriend and even a couple of nephews who steal the scene when they are on the page.  As Lincoln falls harder and harder for Beth, he begins to realize that he has to live his own life more fully if hes ever going to deserve a girl like her.  She becomes the catalyst for some much needed change in his life, even though he knows she's taken.  And he's been secretly reading her emails.  And he doesn't actually know what she looks like.

There was very little about this book that I didn't like.  I found it absolutely charming and an easy, feel-good read.  It was fun to go back to 1999, before social media, before iPhones and before we all knew that Y2K was nothing but a big dud.  If I had to mention anything negative, it is that the book did feel like it dragged on just a little bit at the end.  I imagine it had to, however.  There were some knots in Beth and Lincoln's relationship that required some untangling.  It's a minor issue, however, and when all was said and done, I was proud of Lincoln, happy for Beth, and thrilled for Jennifer.  I closed the book with a smile on my face, and that's always nice.

This book is a difficult one to rate, because there isn't too much to object to, and yet one character, Justin, has a MOUTH on him.  I found it funny, and completely true to who Justin is, but I want to make sure that if you're concerned about these things....there is some language.  Mostly only when Justin is around, though, and he's not around that much.

If you love a rom-com and want to read something that will make you feel good, read "Attachments".  You won't regret it.