Review: Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

Publication Date: October 8^th 2015
Publisher: MacmillanLength: 522 pages

Simon Snow just wants to relax and savor his last year at the Watford School of Magicks, but no one will let him. His girlfriend broke up with him, his best friend is a pest, and his mentor keeps trying to hide him away in the mountains where maybe he’ll be safe. Simon can’t even enjoy the fact that his roommate and longtime nemesis is missing, because he can’t stop worrying about the evil git. Plus there are ghosts. And vampires. And actual evil things trying to shut Simon down. When you’re the most powerful magician the world has ever known, you never get to relax and savor anything.
Carry On is a ghost story, a love story, a mystery and a melodrama. It has just as much kissing and talking as you’d expect from a Rainbow Rowell story — but far, far more monsters.

I’m still catching up with the rest of the world when it comes to Rainbow Rowell’s books, so when I started reading ‘Carry On’ I had no idea until a friend told me when I was a third of the way through that it was in fact a book that had been a fictional book in one of Rainbow Rowell’s other books ‘Fangirl’ where the main character wrote fanfiction about the character’s in ‘Carry On’. Confused yet? I was, but I was also highly entertained at how meta Rainbow was deciding to go with her latest novel.

Considering ‘Fangirl’ takes a fictional look at the real life Harry Potter fan-fic extravaganza, it is no surprise that the easiest way to sum up this book is to say that it’s like Harry Potter on crack.
It’s bizarre, completely insane, brilliant and more than a little crazy, and on the whole I loved it.

Rainbow dumps you into Simon and Baz’s final year at Watford and it feels like there should have been seven books leading up to this where we see all the crazy stuff they got up to and watch the rivalries and relationships develop. Instead we’re given this as a standalone and get constant references back to the various things that have happened in the past seven years. Sometimes that works brilliantly when they’re just casually dropped in and you have a moment of ‘wait, WHAT!?’ but other times I was just left feeling frustrated because I had missed all of this other stuff being referenced. It ends up being a bit of a mixed bag where some of it works and some of it doesn’t and I was left see sawing back and forth between loving it and being frustrated.

The magic is crazy. I adored so much of the insanity and frequently found myself laughing out loud – particularly at the phrases for spells that they use. It was all just so utterly bizarre. I also really loved the relationship between Simon and Baz, that was probably the best part of the entire novel for me. Scrap that, Baz was the best part of the novel for me. He’s snarky and aloof and the banter alone was fabulous. Rainbow plays on so many clichés and turns it into something other, something that you never expect.

However I did have a couple of problems with it, mostly due to the complete lack of surprise at the twists and reveals. I could see them coming right from the start so instead of it eliciting gasps and excitement from me, I was left waiting for the characters to catch on. I also struggled with Simon’s persistent one track mindedness about Baz in the first section of the novel. Once Baz makes an appearance and we start getting his point of view, it wasn’t nearly so frustrating and it didn’t bother me in the same way. However to start with Simon sounds like a broken record and the lack of anything else really driving the plot forward makes it drag a little until Baz shows up.

All in all this was a good book, a quick and enjoyable read, and one that has made me even more eager to go and read ‘Fangirl’. I’m proof that you don’t have to have read ‘Fangirl’ first to enjoy and understand ‘Carry On’, although we’ll see how my opinion of this book changes after reading the former. It’s not without its problems, but it’s funny and unique and if you’re a fan of Harry Potter is definitely one to pick up.

Review: Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Publication Date: April 14^th 2011
Publisher: Dutton
Length: 323 pages

"Hi, I'm the guy who reads your e-mail, and also, I love you . . . "
Beth Fremont and Jennifer Scribner-Snyder know that somebody is monitoring their work e-mail. (Everybody in the newsroom knows. It's company policy.) But they can't quite bring themselves to take it seriously. They go on sending each other endless and endlessly hilarious e-mails, discussing every aspect of their personal lives.
Meanwhile, Lincoln O'Neill can't believe this is his job now- reading other people's e-mail. When he applied to be "internet security officer," he pictured himself building firewalls and crushing hackers- not writing up a report every time a sports reporter forwards a dirty joke.
When Lincoln comes across Beth's and Jennifer's messages, he knows he should turn them in. But he can't help being entertained-and captivated-by their stories.
By the time Lincoln realizes he's falling for Beth, it's way too late to introduce himself.
What would he say . . . ?

Whilst I didn’t get along as well as I’d hoped with ‘Eleanor & Park’ I found myself falling head over heels in love with ‘Landline’ a couple of months ago so I’ve been itching to read the rest of Rainbow Rowell’s books ever since and find 

out which way I fall with them.

I did really enjoy ‘Attachments’ but unfortunately not quite as much as I’d hoped. It was a good read, enjoyable and engaging and incredibly funny in places, but at the same time I didn’t connect with the characters as I’d hoped and the plot becomes really stagnant at several points and a whole lot of nothing actually happens.

Everything starts out brilliantly with a hilarious exchange between Beth and Jennifer, one that sets the tone for their friendship wonderfully and gets the novel off to a great start. But then we meet Lincoln, who I didn’t really connect with in the same way and the story kinda stumbles out. Lincoln’s story is much slower, in fact it barely moves for the majority of the novel and it really drags everything back. I found myself putting the book down repeatedly because I’d become invested each time with Beth and Jennifer, and then lose interest with Lincoln.

I also really didn’t feel satisfied with the resolution. It felt like the plot meandered along for most of the novel and then things start to happen but not really and then suddenly poof, done. I felt like I missed the build-up, I missed the excitement and as a result I missed the pay off.

None of this means I didn’t enjoy it though. Beth and Jennifer’s friendship was the heart of this and I adored them. I loved their emails, the little snippets of their lives and backstory coming together. It was a gorgeous friendship, and my favourite part of the entire story. I did eventually start to enjoy Lincoln’s parts but never in the same way, and I never felt entirely comfortable with both Lincoln and Beth’s methods when it came to finding the other.

So whilst I did enjoy it, and I did find it funny and sweet, it also didn’t hit me in the same way as ‘Landline’ which was a shame because I know so many people who loves this one. Maybe I need to come back to it at another point, but this time around ‘Attachments’ sadly wasn’t quite my cup of tea.

Review: Landline by Rainbow Rowell

Publication Date: July 3^rd 2015 (paperback)

Publisher: Orion
Length: 308 pages

Huge thanks to Netgalley and Orion for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review

Georgie McCool knows her marriage is in trouble; it has 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 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?

So the first Rainbow Rowell book I ever read was ‘Eleanor & Park’ and whilst I enjoyed it, it didn’t hit me in quite the same way as a lot of other people I know who loved it. So I wasn’t in any huge rush to pick up any of her other books, they were always on the ‘yeah, I’ll get to it at some point’ pile. And then I had a long train journey back home and Landline was on my kindle and I thought I should really try it and see.

Reading Landline was like being hit by a truck in the feels. On finishing it I was actually glad that I hadn’t read it before now, as I don’t think that it would have resonated with me in quite the same way. Having waited until now, when I’m coming up to my first wedding anniversary, it struck a lot of chords inside me. I may not have kids yet, or a high pressure job in tv and been married for 17 years, but I do have that fear. That worry that maybe love isn’t enough, and it was both heart-breaking and uplifting to read Georgie and Neal’s story and to see them battle through the little things and the big things together, because they loved each other and couldn’t imagine life without the other.

The writing is poetic and beautiful and orchestrated to perfection to provide maximum impact when reading. I fell into the story, into their lives and their memories and their love for each other and at times felt like I was buoyed by it and others like I was drowning. It is gut wrenching and stunning. Funny and tragic. Magical and utterly mundane. It gives you the insights into young Georgie who is full of certainty and love and determination and juxtaposes her against older Georgie who is worn and tired and desperately trying to juggle all of the balls at once and keeps missing.

"You don't know when you are 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."

I genuinely couldn’t see how this could end. Obviously I was hoping for hope and happiness, but I just wasn’t sure. I was filled with as much desperation, bewilderment and uncertainty as Georgie was as she remembered and re-remembered and tried to work out what to do. I stumbled off the train after reading and fell into my Husband’s arms, desperate for comfort and reassurance, I was so invested into Georgie’s story.

In short, this book is beautiful. A gorgeous melding of magic and reality, of hope and loss, but most importantly of love in all its many shapes and guises. I fell in love with Georgie and I fell in love with Landline and I think I may have just fallen for Rainbow. Now I’m itching to get into every other book she’s written, but I think Landline will always hold a special place in my heart, and be a book that I come back to over and over again for the little pieces of humour and wisdom and hope folded delicately into the prose.