Landline

My first book from this author and I enjoyed it. It`s starts out pretty normal and then it becomes strange in an interesting way. A good Chick-lit, romantic funny entertaining book.

“Nobody's lives just fit together. Fitting together is something you work at. It's something you make happen - because you love each other.”

Her grand gesture didn't impress me as I don't think it solved anything in the end. Her epiphanies will amount to nothing if she doesn't confront her husband about his unhappiness. After all, it was 1998 Neal she was talking to throughout that week, not the current version of him. This Neal still doesn't know what's going in her head. Seth is still a very real and serious problem between them and she still hasn't made a decision in regards to that. They have been each other's crutches for almost twenty years but it has to stop. She needs to draw some boundaries or they will be in the same spot as the week before.

I guess I just wanted to see her and present Neal really open up to each other and talk about how they were actively going to work on improving their marriage. Just her showing up there couldn't possibly be enough for him. Neither "I'll do better".

Abandoned at 20%.

Seems like it has some good comments on love and relationships–loving is hard work, but commitment is important; you should be with someone that can't help but love you and they love you in the right way; etc. Not really wanting to read a book about relationships and marriages right now. Boring plot, seems to be similar to the movie, Frequency, where someone is able to speak with their loved one from the past to discover some hidden truth or work through something.
I enjoyed the writing. Seemed easy to read. Just not what I want right now.

This was a nice light read. I like the play on a Christmas Carol. From all the raving, I expected more from this novel.

So very disappointing. I forced myself to finish in the hopes that maybe, somehow, because it's Rainbow Rowell, it would salvage itself. Nope, the ending was an anticlimactic wreck. Her YA is excellent, filled with complex and believable characters and situations. Yet this “adult” book included a pandering attempt at a love triangle and a magic, time-traveling phone. Say what? This was whiny, poorly written, plot-less dreck. I believe you to be better than this, RR.

Short Review: A 14 year marriage is in danger, and a magic phone to the past may be just the thing the marriage needs to be saved. Rainbow Rowell is definitely now in my list of ‘favorite authors'. Rowell should not be considered a YA author and this book is proof of that. While not too heavy, it is a book that will be appreciated by adults that are old enough to have been married 14 years. Good on the importance of marriage and family without idealizing either and not feeling like it preaches. The ending was not my favorite because I did't think things were ‘solved' but instead just hinted at. I spend some time talking about some of the complaints about the book that I have read in other reviews on my full review.

Click through for my full review on my blog http://bookwi.se/landline/

Re-read this on Christmas Eve Eve and Christmas Eve 2016. Bumping it up from three to four stars. It's a cozy, heartwarming read for this time of year.

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This was fun to listen to and there were some really good bits. But the plot was so one-note, like it should have been a short story. But what do I know – I listened to this mostly while I was sick and probably even slept through parts of it (oops).

Really enjoyed the writing and the stuff with Georgie's kids and everything at her mom's house. Could not stand Neal. Can't say much else without spoiling it, but I sort of feel like Rowell's (INCREDIBLE) talent was wasted on a story about a dope like Neal.

Georgie is kind of selfish. Actually, I suppose she is a lot selfish, but aren't we all? Don't we all take it for granted that the ones we love will always love us? And it's only when that ideal is threatened do we actually start imagining what life would be like without that love. Examining the times we left without a goodbye kiss or hung up the phone without saying ‘I love you'.

And that's what Georgie is doing now. Trying to deny that there is anything serious going on while also terrified that everything is terribly wrong. When she finds herself actually speaking to Neal in the past she believes this, somehow, is how she can fix her marriage in the present. We move back and forth from the present to the past and Rowell so perfectly captures the thrill of falling in love and the desperation of heartbreak.

I remembered acutely while reading, my first and only real serious break up. How helpless and heartbroken I felt. How much it physically hurt, which was the most surprising thing of all. Reading Landlines reminded me of all of that and more.

The book is soft. There is no harsh morals or shocking situations. It is a love story, a real love story full of highs and lows and reality. HA! Reality with a magic phone...

4.5 Stars

If the last few years have taught us readers anything, it's that if you want quirky, honest, heart-felt romance with real (and usually moderately overweight) people and solid laughs, Rainbow Rowell will consistently deliver for you. And if you don't think you want that, after you read her, you'll realize that's just what you wanted after all. She has two YA books and now two Adult books to her credit. Her latest, Landline delivers the typical Rowell magic in her story, but this time she included something else: actual magic. Sort of.

Georgie McCool is half of a pretty successful TV writing team who are thiiiiis close to being much more successful, all they have to do is crank out a handful of scripts in the next couple of weeks and they're in a great position to sell their first series. The catch is, this involves working over Christmas – despite Georgie's plans to go to her mother-in-law's in Omaha with her husband, Neal and their two daughters. Georgie says that she can't pass up this opportunity, so Neal and the girls go off without her.

Georgie sees this as a regrettable occurrence, but one of the sacrifices she has to make to get her dream show made. Her mother, step-father and sister see it as her husband leaving her, and Georgie ends up staying with them. Which gets Georgie to worrying – especially when she can never seem to reach Neal on the phone during the day. At night, however, when her iPhone battery is dead, she has to resort to the landline in her old room and she ends up talking to Neal back before they got engaged.

Don't ask. It makes no sense. She never bothers to explain. And it doesn't matter. Georgie eventually figures out that's what's going on and she rolls with it, and the reader does, too.

These conversations, as well as the absence of her family, lead Georgie on a path down memory lane, reflecting on the beginning of their relationship and how it changed as they did. Maybe Neal had made a mistake choosing her. Maybe she'd ruined her life (and his) by choosing him. Would they have both been better off going their separate ways? Or was there something worth fighting for now? Would that matter? The clock is ticking – for Georgie's marriage (both now and then) and her career. Is she up for it?

The tension is real, the apprehension, fear, and self-doubt (for starters) that Georgie is wrestling with is very obvious and palpable. Yet while focusing on this, Rowell's able to create a believable world filled with a lot of interesting people. There's Georgie's partner/best friend, Seth and another writer on their current (and hopefully future) show – and Georgie failing to hold up her end of things there, as much as she tries.

Then there's her sister, mother and step-father. They're much better developed (probably only because we spend more time with them). Her mother's a pretty implausible character, yet not a cartoon, she's a pug fanatic, married someone much younger than her, and generally seems really happy. Her sister's about done with high school and is figuring herself out (and mostly has) – she's a hoot, and my biggest problem with the book is that we don't get more of Heather. Not that there wasn't plenty of her – and it'd require the book to take a far different shape. We get whole storylines about all the non-Neal people in her life, little vignettes showing us their character, giving us smiles in the midst of Georgie's crisis, like:

“Kids are perceptive, Georgie. They're like dogs”–she offered a meatball from her own fork to the pug heaped in her lap–“they know when their people are unhappy.”
“I think you may have just reverse-anthropomorphized your own grandchildren.”
Her mom waved her empty fork dismissively. “You know what I mean.”
Heather leaned into Georgie and sighed. “Sometimes I feel like her daughter. And sometimes I feel like the dog with the least ribbons.”

Georgie hadn't known back then how much she was going to come to need Neal, how he was going to become like air to her.
Was that codependence? Or was it just marriage?”

She needed him.
Neal was home. Neal was base.
Neal was where Georgie plugged in, and synced up, and started fresh every day. He was the only one who knew her exactly as she was.

Landline

It was interesting reading this right after [b:Seconds 20442885 Seconds Bryan Lee O'Malley https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1399502819s/20442885.jpg 17378014], because they're both about late twentysomething/early thirtysomethings getting some kind of do-over. I loved them both, because I guess I'm at that stage of my life. EVERYTHING'S FINE DON'T LOOK AT MEI loved Georgie as a protagonist. Except for the failing marriage part, I related to her very strongly. The magic phone part was kind of... IDEK if it was necessary, to be honest, but also I don't care.

This is the fourth Rowell novel I've read and the fourth Rowell novel I've enjoyed. I've read enough Rowell to figure out the secret of her magic is twofold: great dialogue and great real characters. This story is about the marriage of Georgie and her husband, Neal. The marriage has hit a rock and we are not sure whether the boat is going down or if someone can patch the hole before it's too late. It doesn't take long to find yourself loving Georgie and Neal, rooting for them, wishing you could pull them aside and trying to help them along. And, oddly, though the reader can't help out, assistance does come in a totally unexpected form, from conversations on an old landline phone.

She did it once again. Poetic, but not cheesy, Landline is the first time Rainbow Rowell adventures herself into the adult couples in crisis universe, and brilliantly. At first i thought I knew what Was going to happen and was a bit disappointed, and as the story progressed I saw the error of my ways: even if it was predictable, she would have made it worthwhile.
Georgie is a series writer on the verge of a career break - and a break up from her 15 year husband as a consequence.
Everything else is a lovely and sweet and real and poweful - with the right amount of crazy, represented by a yellow phone that transports her to a past when she was led by certainties more often than not.
If you are still waiting, I haven't done a good job, so I'll sum it up: she rocks, as usual.

Easily my least favorite novel by Rainbow Rowell, but still enjoyable. I would hate to think that Eleanor and Park would grow up and have this kind of marriage, though.