Attachments in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

Apr 03, 2014 eb rated it it was amazing

Shelves: male-protagonist, realistic, adult, romance, female-protagonist, multiple-viewpoints, print, new-adult

I read this in a single Sunday. I read all day and couldn't put it down. Sometimes, I confess I was a little bored with Lincoln's sections (he's so SLOW! so Midwestern in his inability to make a decision!) even though I appreciated the realness of his conflicts (growing up sucks).

But the more straight forward, narrative sections paled in comparison to how scintillating and ALIVE the e-mail exchanges between Jennifer and Beth were. I found myself falling in love with them just as Lincoln did, un ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Apr 12, 2015 alana rated it really liked it

Shelves: romance

Curse you, Rainbow Rowell, and your ability to make me cry in public!! No, jk, I adore you. Please keep writing books that give me all the feels. I'll just have to remember not to read any of them on airplanes again. Again! Also, you make stalking seem so sweet. Oh, and 90s nostalgia like whoa. ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Apr 03, 2015 Lacey Louwagie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, romance, 100-book-challenge-2015

4.5 stars

My expectations weren't super high for this book -- it was Rainbow Rowell's first book, and it didn't garner nearly as much attention as her later ones. Perhaps that's why I was so pleasantly surprised.

I do not give five-star reviews lightly, but I loved this book. Rowell's prose is as accessible as always, but what really makes this book shine are the characters. Yes, that's a cliche way to review a book, but here it is so true that even weeks after finishing it I can still conjure the 4.5 stars

My expectations weren't super high for this book -- it was Rainbow Rowell's first book, and it didn't garner nearly as much attention as her later ones. Perhaps that's why I was so pleasantly surprised.

I do not give five-star reviews lightly, but I loved this book. Rowell's prose is as accessible as always, but what really makes this book shine are the characters. Yes, that's a cliche way to review a book, but here it is so true that even weeks after finishing it I can still conjure these people up in my head. These are the kinds of people I know in real life; they are faulted and complicated and confused but basically all okay.

I do tend to like epistolatory stories, and about half of this book is told in emails between two friends at work. These chapters absolutely fly by -- my one complaint is that the emails are written more in the way that one would use IM than email, with single line replies going back and forth. Is this how people were using email back in 1999? I remember much longer chunks of text on both sides, more akin to actual letters. But I can forgive this lapse in realism for the way this format allows the story to progress quickly and effortlessly.

I also absolutely loved Lincoln, probably because I related to him. There are so few books about adults who have limited romantic experience and find themselves feeling perpetually on the outside. Although he falls in love with Beth through reading her email (he's hired to do internet security and reading work emails for policy violations is actually his job), Rowell manages to walk the line between sympathetic and creepy incredibly well. That is, even though the action itself may come across as creepy, she is so good at creating Lincoln as a decent, non-threatening character that it's easy to identify with both his guilt and his compulsion to keep reading -- as someone who spent so much of my single life inside my own head, I could understand why Lincoln chose to stay in that "safe" place where he could experience the feelings of attraction without accepting the complications of acting on them.

Secondary characters are also well-done -- I particularly liked the conversations Lincoln had with an older woman at work in the break room, and his interactions with his D&D group. The thing that probably bugged me most about the book was Lincoln's mom -- not her character so much, although she was kind of annoying, but the fact that she didn't have a job and yet didn't seem to be in poverty, and the book never explained this. If it were possible not to work AND also not worry about money, we'd all be doing it. This oversight felt particularly jarring against the accomplished believability of the rest of the book.

Still, I knew this book was something special when, as the ending neared, I felt certain that no matter how Rowell chose to wrap it up -- happy or heartbreaking or melancholy -- it would be perfect. And it was. ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Apr 22, 2012 Abby Johnson rated it really liked it

Shelves: audio

This book delighted me more than I thought it would! It's a cute, sweet story just perfect for women in their late 20s and early 30s. The 90s setting is perfect for my generation, too. We'll get a lot of the references that will probably date the book within a few years (when the target audience may not get a lot if the references). That was part of what made the book so fun for me!

The audio recording is nicely narrated, with enough differentiation in the voices that you could tell whose email ...more

Like · see review

Dec 16, 2014 AJ rated it really liked it

Based on the premise, going into this book I felt like it had to have a really unrealistic ending or end badly, but I figured I'd try it anyway since I liked Eleanor & Park so much. About halfway through I realized how much I liked the characters & that the premise wasn't as cheesey or creepy as I originally thought. One part of the ending was weird, but overall it ended without being unrealistic or bad, so I'm happy with it - & impressed again with Rainbow Rowell's writing. ...more

Like · see review