BKHorne

So, I can really only gush about this book. And that gushing really comes down to a mega fan-girl moment over Rainbow Rowell, who I adore.

Rainbow Rowell can write. She can really, really write. She can tell a story (with a magic time traveling phone) that is so real and so poignant that there is really no choice but for you to love it. I knew that my love of Ms. Rowell's books was official last year after reading Eleanor and Park and then again after Attachments-- but it wasn't until I finished this book that I realized now it was on, for serious. She is amazing.

This is the story of Georgie and Neal (and sometimes Seth) and how their marriage fell apart and sort of how it got put back together again. Georgie is a TV comedy writer (she sort of reminded me a bit of Liz Lemon from 30 Rock) and Neal is her husband and a stay-at-home-dad. We join the party when Neal is leaving for Omaha for Christmas. Georgie is supposed to go, but instead she doesn't. Georgie decides she can't go with them at the last minute because she (and writing partner Seth) have finally gotten THE MEETING for the production of their own show. The show they have been writing, imagining and wish they could write for the last 17 years, since college.

Once Rowell introduced the idea of the best-friend relationship between Seth and Georgie I got concerned that we were going to have a love triangle and I can't HANDLE love triangles. I should have known better. This is Rainbow Rowell we are talking about and she just wouldn't do that to me. She doesn't. There isn't a love triangle, but there are the ideas of love, priorities and choices and how those things effect the people we love.

The ending made me glow. The backstory of Georgie and Neal is slowly revealed throughout the book. It made me glow. It is the cutest, most real and least clique romance I've read in a long, long time-- maybe ever. There is nothing stereotypical about this book and nothing typical about these characters. They are just delightfully honest and flawed.