48. Attachments by Rainbow Rowell
After adoring Eleanor and Park and Fangirl, I decided to read Rainbow Rowell’s first novel Attachments. Sometimes an author writes their best work first and everything else pales in comparison, while other authors write ok first novels and hone their craft so that each succeeding novel is better. Rowell definitely fits the latter profile as I found Attachments to be fairly generic (though with an interesting writing style), while I enjoyed her latter two novels much more.
Attachments is set in 1999 and is told both from the first person perspective of Lincoln, a pseudo-IT guy working the night shift at a newspaper to flag in appropriate use of work email, and through the back and forth emails of Jennifer, a copy editor, and Beth the paper’s movie critic. Lincoln is an awkward guy still living at home with his mother at the age of 28 and not quite over his high school girlfriend who dumped him during their freshman year of college. While doing his job he reads the emails written by Beth and Jennifer, but instead of flagging them he just continues to let them email against the company policy so that he can continue to read what they’re writing. Imagine his surprise when he figures out that the cute employee Beth starts writing about is him. Will he ever have enough courage to meet her in person, and has he doomed his chances with her by reading her emails for all these months?
Other than the format it was kind of an average modern romance novel, and nothing I would say you absolutely must read. I give it a 6 out of 10.