Review: Landline by Rainbow Rowell

Landline by Rainbow Rowell
Series: Stand-Alone
Published by St.Martin's Press
Format: Hardcover
Genre: Adult, Contemporary
Goodreads * B&N * TBD

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 beside the point now.
Maybe that was always beside 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?

Thank goodness for this book! It pulled me out of a very sad book rut! I was going through a lot of 3 and 4 stars and even some DNFs before I finally got to this fantastic 5 star. Landlines had everything I was looking for without even really knowing what I was looking for. I totally fell in love with Georgie's and Neal's story.

So we have Georgie, a very busy TV writer. She's been working on one particular "dream show" with her best friend Seth since they were in college (so ten-ish years), when they finally get someone who may be interested in picking it up. This all happens just a few days before Christmas and Seth convinces Georgie to work over the holiday instead of going to Omaha with her husband, Neal, and their two girls, Alice and Noomi. This comes up after years of many night home late, etc. It's pretty clear from the start that there are a few troubles in this marriage.

Throughout the week that Neal is gone, Georigie ends up staying in her old childhood home with her mother, younger sister, and step-father. That is one quirky bunch! In her old bedroom is a yellow, rotary, landline phone that somehow lets present-day Georgie communicate with college Neal. Georgie just thinks she's going insane.

My favorite element of the book where the flashbacks to college. I really enjoyed watching Georgie and Neal fall in love and learning about how they came to be. Everything about "early" them was so sweet and made the whole story become such a heartwarming read. All of the characters were awesome and made me love them in their own ways. Georgie's mom, Seth, Heather (the sister), and even the two girls. It's awesome when the supporting characters in a love story are just as great as the couple. The humor was also spot on and actually works very nicely with the drama.

There's really nothing I didn't enjoy, hence the perfect rating. I mean, honestly, I had a few questions leftover at the end, but that's okay, I will just make-up my own answers to them. For a while now I've been wanting to read a love-story and a novel that would stick with me and I finally found it.

Favorite Quotes:

“You don't know when you're twenty-three.You don't know what it really means to crawl into someone else's life and stay there. You can't see all the ways you're going to get tangled, how you're going to bond skin to skin. How the idea of separating will feel in five years, in ten - in fifteen. When Georgie thought about divorce now, she imagined lying side by side with Neal on two operating tables while a team of doctors tried to unthread their vascular systems.She didn't know at twenty-three.”

“Wasn't that the point of life? To find someone to share it with?
And if you got that part right, how far wrong could you go? If you were standing next to the person you loved more than everything else, wasn't everything else just scenery?”  

“How does anyone ever know whether love is enough? It's an idiotic question. Like, if you fall in love, if you're that lucky, who are you to even ask whether it's enough to make you happy?”  

I am eagerly anticipating reading the other three of Rainbow Rowell's books currently out.

Happy Reading!