Given that I’ve really enjoyed all of the other books I’ve read by Rainbow Rowell, I’m surprised it took me this long to read Landline! I would consider this an adult novel compared to her Simon Snow trilogy and Fangirl, but it was just as great and easy of a read!
Georgie is living her best, if hectic life. She’s just been given the green light to write up episodes her and her best friend/writing partner, Seth, have been working on since college. The only problem with this good news is that it comes just before she’s set to head to Omaha with her two young daughters and husband, Neal, to visit his mother for the holidays. Neal tells her she can stay, but immediately after they leave Georgie feels as though she made the wrong choice this time. But the show is really important! Neal knows that! He always knows that! But maybe he’s finally tired of Georgie putting work before him and the girls. Neal’s sacrificed a lot in his life for Georgie, and she seems to have grown complacent with this.
Georgie only really starts to notice when Neal doesn’t answer any of her calls, and then her family is pretty well convinced that he left her. This does not bode well for productivity. Seth is pulling his hair out in frustration, but in between all the present day fretting, we are given a time machine into Georgie and Neal’s romance. They were sort of polar opposites, but you could tell both were infatuated with each other from the first time they saw each other. This leads Georgie to remember that back in 1998, Georgie was certain they were broken up when he left for Omaha without her one Christmas. Instead, he came back on Christmas day to propose. All of this reminiscing leads her to discover that her childhood landline is an actual time machine where she is able to talk to college-aged Neal, during the exact 1998 Christmas she was thinking about.
The availability to the past rightly has her freaked out, but it also has her questioning if the two of them should have been together at all. Look, Georgie does some ridiculously frustrating things, and in a world that is now mostly work from home, I can’t wrap my head around why she couldn’t have written scripts in Omaha. I also feel like it took her way too long to make the only logical choice in this situation, but all her indecisiveness gave us time to really understand their relationship. I don’t know if I was given a time machine telephone that I would use it, but I will never know, thankfully. While the book was enjoyable, I was a little frustrated with how abrupt the ending was. Nothing really got tied up with Seth, and Georgie and Neal never even had a conversation. I’d like to think it all works out well, but it would have been nice to read about.
Overall, another fun read from Rainbow Rowell, and I still have one of her novels left in my list. Go check out any of her work if you haven’t already!