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.
