Attachments - Rainbow Rowell

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"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 . . . ?


This book I bought after reading Landline and Fangirl and loving them, I also participated in a joint read, reading this book with the lovely Catriona, you can follow her here

This book is about Beth and Jennifer, they work in a office and spend most of their time sending personal emails cross the office to each other. This is something and one of the reasons Lincoln being in the company. One of his jobs is to scan all emails at night for hot words, picking up on employees abusing the system and using it to send personal emails to one another.

Meet Lincoln, he is 29, single, still lives at home with his mum and plays Dungeons and Dragons at the weekend. Oh yes and he works in I.T! We get this stereotype image of him as a bit of a nerd/geek and with this we get a picture of him in our mind. This however could not be further from the truth if we tried. Lincoln actually is tall dark and handsome! He is deeply unhappy, he cannot see any point in his job and really does not enjoy snooping through peoples emails. He does however like Beth and Jennifer and although he knows they are breaking the rules, he has no intention of shopping them up to the boss. What harm are they doing? They also seem really nice girls.

Over time Lincoln gets drawn in, in the women's emails and he decides that actually he really likes Beth, she has a boyfriend and that's never going to change, but if it did he wonders how he would be able to be with her after knowing so much through those emails.

A lot of this book is written through Beth and Jennifer's emails, personally I love books like this, I have no idea why, but I always have. I have read some reviews mentioning that this was confusing. I must say that at the beginning I would agree with them, it was a little confusing. However when you get into the flow of the book I knew who's voice it was and could quite easily follow the book and enjoy it. By having it written in emails, I found the book a very quick read ant actually at times preferred the style of the emails to Lincolns voice. I felt that the women had a good connection and you almost felt you were one of their friends emailing too.

Beth was a brilliant character, she was witty, kind and it came across that she was a true friend to Jennifer.My love for Beth developed over the course of the story. I enjoyed her one liners in the novel and felt she kept the pace a lot of the time through the email exchanges.

Jennifer I loved and connected with right from the beginning more so than Beth. I felt at times that Jennifer was me in the book and I could really relate to her problems early on. I also became shocked by her story line as it felt a little tragic, which is something I have become familiar with in the way Rainbow Rowell writes. She writes about real things, not everything is a fairy tale, however the emotions you feel can make you feel like that. Jennifer I personally felt was a very good developed character and I loved her.

Right, Lincoln, hmm my opinion of him changed so much through the story. I felt really sorry for him to begin with - I saw this nerd, with no friends and no life. As his character began to develop I saw a softer side to him and then an obsessive one, which personally I thought he could do anything. Who knows what someone would do who is obsessed! Finally my opinion of him changed again towards the end and I am so glad it did. I am also glad Rainbow Rowell chose the ending she did for his character. I was really pleased with the outcome.

Other secondary characters were just as important in the story such as Lincoln's mum. These characters were also real and I could feel the emotion from them too.

I loved the development of the story and although it may not be everyone's cup of tea down to the format it is written in I think you should give it a chance. I enjoyed this book so much I practically read it in a day. I am fast becoming a huge fan of Rainbow Rowell, she is able to write really funny books with some fantastic one liners while still covering real, sometimes a little depressing topics.