Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Rainbow Rowell has impressed me in both “Fangirl” and “Eleanor and Park” and continues to do so with “Attachments”.

“Attachments” is set in 1999 when Internet was still quite new to the world and everyone was jittery about the Y2K. Beth and Jennifer, colleagues and best friends in “The Courier”, emailed back and forth using the company’s computer on things completely unrelated to work. Lincoln, the shy IT man in charge of reading and flagging such emails, read each and every one of the email exchanges between the two women. What was initially reading out of curiosity, he became more attached and slowly fell in love with one of them. And to his surprise, so did she. He now needs to decide what to do with what was supposedly a secret and find out whether there is such a thing as love before first sight.

I rarely read chic-lits but if it’s Rainbow Rowell, I will pick it up. I do not even have to think about it. I will just pick it up and read and know that I will enjoy it. Rainbow Rowell just knows how to make me relate to the story, whether it’s as a fangirl in “Fangirl”, as that awkward young teenager in “Eleanor and Park” or even as a shy IT guy in this book even though I’m neither shy nor an IT guy (obviously). She has a way with words and a way to make me laugh in the middle of the train ride to work.

Sure, I never knew how love before first sight even feels like (unless you count listening to an artiste singing a song before knowing how he looks like and falling in love with him through the song). But how Lincoln is just meandering pretty much aimlessly through life is what I find relatable. Everyone’s been there, I’m sure – that feeling of not knowing whether what you are doing is exactly what you want to be doing for the rest of your life but at the same time, just not wanting to change that situation because of the uncertainty of it.

That’s why I love this book and that’s why I finish it in just a short time because I enjoy it that much.

Oh, Rainbow Rowell, please do not stop writing.

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