Book Review: Landline by Rainbow Rowell

I can't think of a better book I could have read at this time in my life. I didn't know much about this book going in - I just saw that it was voted best fiction of the 2014 on Goodreads, so I figured it was worth a read. I'm really glad I went with that decision and made it my first read of 2015 :)

Landline is a story about a woman named Georgie McCool - she is a TV comedy writer who has been married for 14 years and has two daughters. Things haven't been great with her husband for a while, but then she gets the opportunity to pitch her dream show to a network that is interested in producing it ... the meeting is 2 days after Christmas. This means that she won't be able to go with her husband and kids to Omaha to visit their family, causing her husband to be upset that she always chooses work over them. Her husband, Neal, takes their kids to see their grandparents anyway, leaving Georgie alone in LA. Georgie doesn't like being in her empty house alone, so she starts spending her nights at her mother's house nearby. She tries desperately to call her husband several times while he is gone, only to get snubbed or talk to her daughters or mother in law. Her phone battery is always dead, so one night she decides to use her mother's landline, using an old yellow rotary phone she's had since high school. She not only gets through to her husband, she soon figures out that she is actually talking to her husband in the past the week before he proposed to her.

I know it probably sounds hokey when described this way - in fact, I doubt I would have thought the book was worth my time if I'd gone by the synopsis I just gave - but the best part of the book is what happens between these main points. Georgie gets the chance to look back on her relationship and decide where things went wrong and what she can do to be better in the future. You get to hear all of her memories of how she met her husband and fell in love with him, what went on in their lives that lead to this point. I'm having my own issues with my husband at the moment, and it can be easy to forget the good times ... the great conversations you've had, and the moments that you knew you needed this person in your life. This book served as a great reminder for me that things are never all bad, and that everything can be fixed if you are willing to work on it and you want it bad enough.

I thought this book was a nice story with a fun twist. It was very well written, and the authors descriptions of the events and emotions had beautiful imagery - I could imagine the exact scenes really well due to her great descriptions, and I could really feel what the characters felt. I would definitely recommend this to anyone. I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.