[simpleazon-link asin=”0452297540″ locale=”us”]Attachments: A Novel[/simpleazon-link] by Rainbow Rowell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It’s official! Rainbow Rowell has become my go-to author when I want witty, quirky and nostalgic stories. Her writing style is clever, including unique and surprising metaphors that are infinitely quotable. Attachments, her debut novel, perfectly captures the twenty-something years when people are trying to find their footing as adults. Her characters are ones that I wanted to meet after work and hang with in order to enjoy whip-smart conversation and share a laugh or two. The year is 1999, and the featured event is the non-event of Y2K. The humor of all the drama surrounding that anticlimactic point in history was well mined. The story was impossibly romantic although occasionally frustrating due to the inability of the two main characters to make a move for so long (resulting in some drag in the middle of the book). What drove this book was not so much the plot as it was the dialogue (largely via email) and the relationships. While some authors seek to give us ideal lovers in fantasy locals under unlikely conditions, Rowell celebrates romance in all its awkwardness and humor between the average oddball in worlds we can all recognize.

Quotes:

“Hi, I’m the guy who reads your email, and also, I love you…”

“…with all of the lights and the computer servers, it was like sitting inside a headache” (p. 6).

“Love. Purpose. Those are the things that you can’t plan for. Those are the things that just happen. And what if they don’t happen? Do you spend your whole life pining for them? Waiting to be happy” (p. 87)?

“I’m here, he thought. Find me. Follow me. Make this inevitable” (p. 191).

“I didn’t know love could leave the lights on all the time” (p. 323).

Connect with the author:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/rainbowrowell
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rainbow.rowell.author
Website: http://www.rainbowrowell.com/