Review: Attachments

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell
Publisher: Dutton Adult
Release Date: April 14th, 2011

"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 . . . ?

Taken from Goodreads

Start: 3/5/2014 | End: 3/5/2014 | Pages: 336 | Rating: 3.5 Stars

My Thoughts:

I picked up Attachments because it's by Rainbow Rowell, and I had read Fangirl previously and fell in love with it. Basically I came into this book with high expectations, when I really shouldn't have. After recently finishing up the second book in the series of Daughter of Smoke & Bone, a highly intense book full of action, Attachments went down a completely different path. 

Don't get me wrong, I love Rowell's writing, especially Beth and Jennifer's email messages. But I have to admit that this book started off a little slow. Lincoln, the IT guy at the The Courier, has the job of going through everyone's emails and internet searches for inappropriate behavior. Every time a flag word pops up, it gets sent to Webfence, a filter for the internet. Then he has to read or see what the person has been up to, whether it's gossip or porn, and send them a warning. Everyone is afraid of Lincoln, because of his job, and even he's getting tired of being paid to do nothing. Until, he finds himself being entertained by the email conversations of two column writers, Jennifer and Beth.

Jennifer and Beth talk about everything, literally, especially about their husbands and their love lives. If it wasn't for Rowell's incredible ability to put together words and sentences, I would have scrapped this book already. 70 pages in, and I'm still waiting for something to actually happen. I think this is my punishment for just rambling on my review of Days of Blood & Starlight. Oh well. 

I finished Attachments in one day, because I became so frustrated with Lincoln and Beth never meeting. And that's why I have mixed feelings about this book, because it was well-written and had good characters, but the frustration was just, overbearing. The story really dragged out. I wish I got to see more of the dating aspect of the relationship too, because Rowell just ended the story when they finally found each other. I know the theme was "falling in love with the idea of a person", but I don't think it worked for me.

Overall, don't read this book if you want action in your stories. Attachments also is somewhat similar to Meg Cabot's The Boy Next Door, but not nearly as good.