Review: Landline by Rainbow Rowell

Landline by Rainbow Rowell 

Published: July 8, 2014

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Format: via publisher

Rating: 4/5

Synopsis

Georgie McCool knows her marriage is in trouble. That it’s been in trouble for a long time. She still loves her husband, Neal, and Neal still loves her, deeply — but that almost seems besides the point now.

Maybe that was always besides the point.

Two days before they’re supposed to visit Neal’s family in Omaha for Christmas, Georgie tells Neal that she can’t go. She’s a TV writer, and something’s come up on her show; she has to stay in Los Angeles. She knows that Neal will be upset with her — Neal is always a little upset with Georgie — but she doesn’t expect to him to pack up the kids and go home without her.

When her husband and the kids leave for the airport, Georgie wonders if she’s finally done it. If she’s ruined everything.

That night, Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past. It’s not time travel, not exactly, but she feels like she’s been given an opportunity to fix her marriage before it starts . . .

Is that what she’s supposed to do?

Or would Georgie and Neal be better off if their marriage never happened?

My Thoughts

This book is all about Georgie and her rethinking the outcome of her life. With a little help from a “magical” landline phone she starts to wonder if this is really how her life should be or if she should redo how things played out years ago.

Georgie is TV writers who with her best friend Seth are partners. She decides to back out on the last minute and not go with her family to a planned trip for Christmas. However in the meantime she starts to think she is losing her mind when she finds herself at her mother’s house and calls her husband on the landline. When she talks to him she finds out that she isn’t talking to her husband but her boyfriend. That is she is talking to her soon to be husband back when they were still in college. Sounds confusing? Surprising not really. We learn of Georgie and Neal’s backstory, how they meet, how she falls for him and how Neal had a fiancée when they started talking.

I just really liked the character of Georgie, how she is flawed and how she struggles with having both a family and career. She feels guilty because she wants a career but also knows she is in a sense losing her family. She knows Neal wants and deserves more and also knows her daughters are way closer to their father than her. Like all Rainbow Rowell books there is a great cast of characters. I loved Georgie’s interactions with her sister Heather and her mom. Not to mention her daughters seem very cute and hilarious. I’m on the fence as far as Seth goes, he seems so selfish to me.

However what I loved most was this whole idea if you could go back and change your past/future would you. I’m a strong believer in you can’t just change one thing, if you do everything will change. One thing can alter your life. I loved how all of this showed Georgie what she was missing. She realized that while she was succeeding in one aspect in her life she was failing in another. She had to decide what she truly wanted and if in fact she really wanted it. All in all this is another gem from Rainbow Rowell. One that will make you think if the things you want out of life are really important in the big scheme of things.