Attachments review

Attachments
Rainbow Rowell
April 14th 2011
Dutton Adult

"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 . . . ?

I've had a copy of Attachments lying around for a while now, and because I'd already read and loved Rainbow's other books, I thought that I should finally give this one a go even though it's not YA. Also I asked Twitter what I should read next and Twitter said this, and who am I to defy Twitter? I enjoyed Attachments a lot, but it didn't resonate for me in the same way that her YA books do. I am still really looking forward to her next Adult book, Landline, though, which comes out later this year.

Attachments is all about this guy called Lincoln who gets a new job which basically entails reading other people's emails. He starts reading the exchanges between these two women, Beth and Jennifer, and he ends up falling in love with one of them. For me, this premise falls a little bit between the range of sweet and really creepy, but I went with it, and I was glad that the invasive nature of what he was doing wasn't ignored and that when he did tell people about it, they told him to stop because it's creepy. But at the same time, the emails were probably my favourite part of the book. Because we don't really get to meet Beth or Jennifer properly until really late into the book, all we have to go on as to what they're like is their emails, and their emails were so much fun. Or at least, they started out being fun and then they got more serious as more serious things happened to them, but by that point I was really invested in their friendship anyway, and besides their conversations were still really fun.

I wasn't too sure about Lincoln at the start. I'm not sure why, but he did grow on me a lot. Probably because he's kind of an awkward nerd who isn't a complete arse, so, yeah. And as sort of creepy as the premise is, it was still a really sweet book and I was happy with how it all turned out and everything though. I also really liked the fact that a lot of the book wasn't about Lincoln being in love with Beth, but about Lincoln sort of growing up more as a person and sorting out his life and what have you. I also really liked Doris, the old woman who restocks the vending machines at the place he works at. There's not really a point to that, I just wanted to mention Doris.

One thing that I think Rainbow Rowell does really well is writing books set in different times, but that aren't historical or anything. Attachments is set in 1999/2000 so it's not like there was a massive amount of difference, but it has a really great feel to it and it just works. I loved all the concern about Y2K and the staffs worries about email and introducing the internet int the workplace and all that. It just had a really great atmosphere to it, and it was a really enjoyable book.

I would have more to say if I had written this around the time I actually finished it, but I've been kind of busy this last week and I didn't have time to, but anyway. Attachments was just really good, although for me it wasn't up there with E&P and Fangirl. I'm glad I read it though and if you're looking for just a light, fun read, then this is perfect.