Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

I’m getting more and more attached to Rainbow Rowell’s writing.

After blazing through Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, I was so completely and totally charmed by Rowell’s writing that I went out and bought her other two books, Attachments and Eleanor and Park. I did “eenie meenie minnie mo” to pick which of the two to read first, and landed on Attachments.

Attachments tells the story of Lincoln, an internet security officer for The Courier, a local newspaper. Much of his job consists of reading emails that get flagged with inappropriate content and asking employees to stop misusing the company’s email; however, when he starts reading emails from Beth and Jennifer, a movie critic and a copyeditor respectively, he can’t bring himself to tell them to stop—after all, their emails are harmless gossip, and he finds them genuinely funny and entertaining. The problem is when he finds himself falling for Beth…and finding out she’s falling for him without knowing it.

I loved the premise of this novel, in that it is an impossibly tricky situation; both of these characters are attracted to each other, but because neither know of the other’s affections, neither feel like they can do anything about it. I often wonder how many times unrequited love is truly unrequited, and I was so happy to see a story that explored this idea in such an entertaining way. Flip-flopping between Beth and Jennifer’s email transcripts and Lincoln’s personal narrative, each chapter pulsed with vibrant character voice, a signature trait of Rowell’s writing, I’ve found.

Speaking of characters, I also loved watching the development of each character throughout the novel. Lincoln, for example, starts the novel still living in his mother’s house at 29, having gotten multiple college degrees because he can’t see doing anything but school, and without any romantic prospects since high school. By the end of the novel, by the influence of Beth, Lincoln moves out of his mom’s place, gets a new job, starts working out, gets over his high school flame, and generally gets his life going. Beth is able to leave a dead-beat boyfriend, and Jennifer’s storyline involves a heartbreaking struggle to accept motherhood.

Though there was a lot I loved about this novel, my only complaint was the way it ended. This may not come as a spoiler, but Lincoln and Beth do end up getting together by the end of the story—however, I felt the means in which they meet and fall in love felt…anti-climatic? Rushed? Unsatisfying? Maybe it was because I had imagined their real-life “meet-cute” to be much more subtle, but their story seemed to be wrapped up too quickly for my tastes. Not that I’m complaining—I would rather see them get together than not at all (and trust me, there were times during this book where even that prospect seemed bleak.)

Attachments was a lovely read, and I can’t wait to get started on Eleanor and Park. I was also excited to find that Rainbow Rowell is coming to Boston this month to do a book signing with David Levithan, who wrote one of my favorite books, The Lover’s Dictionary. Question is, which book do I have her sign?!