BookDragon Books for the Diverse Reader

What a year 2013 has been for Rainbow Rowell, beginning and ending with two bestsellers (!) – eleanor & park (oh, be still my heart) and Fangirl (a virtual world I never even knew about!). How lucky for me to have discovered a third Rowell title, her now two-year-old debut (which is aimed at a slightly older audience from her popular young adult fare).

Beth and Jennifer are best friends both working for the same newspaper. While Beth copy-edits and Jennifer reviews films, their constant emails ping back and forth. Beth is baby-phobic, her husband is anything but. Jennifer’s live-in college sweetheart is maturity-averse, Jennifer is not. Throughout the day, they type intimate details while they mull over questions without answers.

From a distance – a mere screen away – Lincoln becomes an invisible third party. Hired to monitor virtual security, Beth and Jennifer’s missives often get caught in the surveillance software for their red-flag vocabulary. And read Lincoln must during his late night shifts.

Lincoln, who’s returned home at age 29 to live with his indulgent mother, is still mourning his only true love whom he followed to California for college, only to be unceremoniously dumped. He hasn’t been able to think of any other woman … until now. Because Jennifer has started talking to Beth with growing regularity about Lincoln as her very own “Cute Guy.” How will Lincoln ever declare his own hidden affections without revealing how much he already knows …?

If you choose to go audible, rest assured that Laura Hamilton is an especially adept narrator, moving effortlessly between voices and ages. Hamilton adds a welcome immediacy to Rowell’s quirky, comical, inventive love-story with just enough longing and heartbreak. No matter how you decide to read it – on the page, stuck in the ears, on a flat screen, Attachments is thoroughly feel-good entertainment, mushy moral dilemmas and all. Live. Laugh. Love. Indeed.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2011