Attachments

“Hi, I’m the guy who reads your e-mail, and also, I love you . . . “

Attachments was a breath of fresh air that I desperately needed while reading Son of a Witch. Rainbow Rowell is fast becoming my literary girlfriend (with John Green being my literary boyfriend, of course) and I can’t wait to start Fangirl.

Set in late 1999, Attachments, like Eleanor & Park, is told from the female and male perspective of a prospective romance. However, the female side of this story is told through emails with her best friend (because our male protagonist has access to her inbox). It’s actually a cute narrative trick- because if Beth doesn’t write it, Lincoln doesn’t read it, which is turn means the reader doesn’t read it.

Beth is in a dead-end relationship, she vents to her friend Jennifer throughout the day on their work email addresses about his lack of commitment among other things- remember when we didn’t text each other 100 times a day! New to the IT department, at the newspaper Beth and Jennifer work at, Lincoln has never gotten over his high school romance but has remained a perpetual college student for the ten years following their break up.  Through mild stalking (on both ends really) they begin to make changes in their lives that lead them to each other.
The nice thing about Attachments is it’s not “young adult”, the main characters are in their mid twenties, but has the hopefulness of most YA romantic fiction. The best part is, you don’t feel like you need to send hate mail to Rainbow at the end. What a relief.