Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

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Publication date: 2012
Publisher: Plume
Pages: 323
My rating: 3 stars
Ages: 17+

Lincoln hates his job--most of the time he does nothing and the rest of the time he has to read other people's emails. He's supposed to be sending warnings when emails are used for something other than work, but he gets caught up in the email conversations of two women. Beth and Jennifer are smart and funny, as well as a little irreverent. Lincoln slowly finds himself falling for one of them, but how could he explain that he's read all of their emails?

I have this horrible habit of just skimming over information at the beginning of things in books like letters and emails. You know, things like dates and places, etc. Which means that about two chapters in I was asking "When was this written?! This seems like it was written a while ago!" So I flip to the front of the book and see that it's only been four years. When I flipped back to the next chapter I got a look at the date on the emails: 1999. Which totally made everything make sense.

It was interesting to go back to a time when email had only about been around for everyone for a couple of years, when the Y2K scare was a big deal, and before "social media" was even a thought. I liked Beth and Jennifer--I would have wanted to become their friend if I were reading their emails too. I was never sure about Lincoln, which is strange because he's the main character; I followed him around for a year and I just didn't really learn much about him. In fact, Lincoln seemed a bit stale.

Younger readers may not understand everything going on back in 1999/2000, but that's part of why we have books, right?

There was some language.

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