Attachments

Attachment
Rainbow Rowell

I needed this book as my holiday read - something light weight, uncomplicated and vaguely funny. I just wish it had been a little less predictable.

Lincoln is employed at a newspaper as the guy who checks the email filter for red flags. It's 1999, and everyone is paranoid about the millenium bug and about the potential evil of emailing, long before reading other people's emails became the job of the government. The emails of two friends, Beth and Jennifer, catch his attention and his imagination - he loves the way Beth writes, she makes him laugh. But before he realises, he knows too much about her to approach her; plus, she already has a rock star boyfriend.

Rainbow Rowell is a great writer - easy to read and very witty (though there is something odd about Lincoln falling for Beth over the way she writes, as if Rowell is celebrating her own amazing talent for words). I don't know what I had hoped for in terms of predictability, but as with any romantic comedy, the guy typically bags the girl, and a little bit of me had hoped that Lincoln's wishes wouldn't be fulfilled.

Lincoln is praised across social media as one of the greatest boyfriends of all time - and he truly is dreamy: clever, sensitive and apparently rather handsome - but his modesty and lack of self-belief seemed too put on, as if Rowell was trying just a little too hard to write the dream man.

Nevertheless, I cannot help but confess that I enjoyed reading this - if you are looking for a holiday read that is a little more high brow than the norm, try Attachment.