Attachments by Rainbow Rowell is a novel that has been on my radar as of late. I wanted to check out her work, so I browsed Goodreads to see what her work was like. I came across this novel - the story of a IT worker who is supposed to police emails at the cusp of Y2K - and it had scores of good reviews and praise, but the synopses I saw were pretty obscure. So, I picked this up on my Kindle app and read the story for myself.
Y'all, the four and five-star reviews were well-deserved. This is such a sweet story.
Storyline
Meet Lincoln, a man who has just been hired at The Courier to monitor the emails of their employees. Along with blocking profanity, he has to make sure that the newspaper's employees aren't abusing their computer privileges by sending non-work-related emails. So, he's supposed to delete the correspondence between copywriters and best friends Beth and Jennifer. That is, until he reads it...and discovers that he is falling for Beth through her words and personality on the screen, despite never having seen her.
And that's all the synopsis you're going to get! ;)
Characters
The main protagonists - Lincoln, Beth, and Jennifer - are very well-written and I was really able to invest in what they were doing and how they grew and changed in the story. Lincoln really impressed me by the story's end; without being too spoiler-y, he changes the most, but it's all for the better.
I will say that the story's plot is mainly driven by the emails between Beth and Jennifer. Their exchanges were my favorite part of the story by far.
The side/supporting characters were written well too, but I didn't feel as invested in them because they would pop in and out of the story intermittently.
Setting
The story takes place in Nebraska in 1999, just before the new millennium. I was born in the 90's, so it was cool reading about the years before cell phones and before social media grew to the prevalence it has in society now. Other than that, setting really doesn't have a prominent part of the story. It's mostly character-driven, and it works.
My Thoughts
I will say that the less you know going into reading this book, the better. I enjoyed the suspense of wondering how Lincoln was going to handle certain situations thrown at him, and how the story was going to turn out in the end. In spite of how long it was, the 89 chapters were fairly short and I was able to read the story fairly quickly due to the pacing. There were times when it was slower going, but once a few small plot twists occurred and the plot got moving again, I loved it.
Therefore, I give Attachments five emails out of five. The emails between Beth and Jennifer along with the final chapters of the book really sealed the deal of this being one of my favorite romances I've read in a long time. If you like sweet, fluffy reads with substance and believable and lovable protagonists, I highly recommend it.
And that was Attachments! Would you check this book out?
Got any recommendations for me? To see what I'm reading now/what's in my "to-read" pile, please check out my Goodreads.
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