Book Review: Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Attachments

Author: Rainbow Rowell
Publisher: Plume
Published: March 27, 2017 (Reprint edition)
Paperback, 336 pages
Rating: 5 stars
★★★★★
Goodreads  Amazon
Summary: "Hi, I'm the guy who reads your e-mail, and also, I love you . . . "
From the award-winning author of Eleanor & Park, Fangirl, and Landline comes a hilarious and heartfelt novel about love in the workplace.

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...?

Review: Gosh, this book is so cute. I love the format of having a one chapter be the email chain between Beth and Jennifer, and then the next chapter be Lincoln's reaction and his life after checking said email in the email filtering software. So the book really follows Lincoln as the main character, though it also seems like Beth and Jennifer are also main characters because there is such a focus on their emails back and forth. It definitely kept me intrigued and I had to keep reading to see what happened next.

I had a very specific image of Lincoln in my head, and when suddenly the book started throwing descriptions of him at me halfway through the book and they didn't match the Lincoln in my head AT ALL, I was thrown for a bit of a loop and had to readjust my mental image. That being said, GOSH. Swoon and a half. Who doesn’t love a nerdy guy who shares his dinner with an old lady, and end up being BFFs with her? Such cute, much aww. Beth and Jennifer were also interesting (though Jennifer would drive me CRAZY if she was my friend). I'd totally be friends with Beth in a heartbeat. And as someone who has a standing Tuesday night D&D game, Lincoln and I would clearly be buds as well.

I really enjoyed this book, and it was super hard for me to put down. It's a cliché, but it really DID keep me up way past my bedtime. Reading this book felt to me what going to work and checking the email filter for correspondence between Beth and Jennifer must feel like for Lincoln, which of course just made me feel like I connected to the characters on yet another level, making me still more invested in the book and the characters. Tricky, Rainbow Rowell. Verrrrry tricky.