weekend read: Attachments

Oh, look another Rainbow Rowell book review. How great.

Sorry. If you’ve been reading here for any great length of time, you know that I find an author I love and then can’t stop until I’ve read all his/her books. So it was going to be Rowell’s turn eventually. To recap: I’ve read two of her young adult novels (Eleanor & Park and Fangirl) and moved onto her first novel, of the contemporary adult genre.

Attachments is a fun novel set in a newspaper workroom, where Lincoln has been hired as internet security which is a fancy way of saying he has to read other people’s emails to make sure they’re not abusing company emailing privileges. Anything the filters catch, he has to read and then send warnings to employees regarding the subject matter.

Lincoln hates his job. But he’s spent enough time in school and earned enough degrees that it just felt like it was time to get a job. So he moved back home to live with his mom and work at the newspaper. Except he’s kind of bad at sending warnings to these two ladies, Beth and Jennifer. They use inappropriate words, spend company time gossiping, and just generally abusing their email privileges, but Lincoln is so entertained and enthralled by their messages that he just can’t bring himself to send them any warnings. So he reads the flagged emails and then deletes them.

Lincoln is a pretty stand up guy and you can’t help but love him as he struggles with this dilemma of wanting more flagged emails from Beth and Jennifer but not wanting to be so attached to them. Then the unthinkable happens: Lincoln realizes he’s in love with Beth. And things get really mess.

I loved this book. I loved that it was basically chick-lit told from a really genuine guy’s point of view and you’re rooting for him the whole time even when it seems to get a little creepy. It was a little annoying that I had to read all about Beth and Jennifer via their emails. Sometimes keeping up with them felt like I was reading a script and not a novel, but it wasn’t enough for me to stop reading and by the end I didn’t notice it. Overall, I loved Attachments by Rainbow Rowell. Three books down and she has yet to disappoint me.