I Will Not Take These Things For Granted - My Review of LANDLINE by Rainbow Rowell

Title: Landline
Author: Rainbow Rowell
Published July 8th 2014  
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Source: ARC

Synopsis:
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 besides the point now.

Maybe that was always besides 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?

 

Rainbow Rowell writes books. Sometimes she writes about adults (ATTACHMENTS and LANDLINE). Sometimes she writes about teenagers (ELEANOR & PARK and FANGIRL). But she always writes about people who talk a lot. And people who feel like they're screwing up. And people who fall in love.

When she's not writing, Rainbow is reading comic books, planning Disney World trips and arguing about things that don't really matter in the big scheme of things.

She lives in Nebraska with her husband and two sons.

This is not Fangirl or Eleanor and Park. This is for people who have lived long enough to make mistakes and wish they could change some decisions they have made in the past.

Landline is an achingly honest look at marriage and family. It focuses on the the pressures, both internal and external, that couples face as they navigate their way through life.  This story has the added element of the supernatural.  Georgie is able to speak to her husband, Neal, in the past. It encourages her to closer examine why she fell in love with him in the first place. It forces her to question her choices and to ask whether she would've made them, knowing what she knows now.  Her magic phone gives her the power to create a new reality for her and her husband, but first she must decide if different is what she really wants.

Once again, Rainbow has left us with an open ending. We have no idea what will happen with Georgie and Neal once they get back to the existence of real life, but we have hope that they will remember what they've learned throughout the story in order to not take each other for granted.

5 out of 5 stars

I came across a song that seemed to share the same general message as LANDLINE.  This is I Will Not Take These Things For Granted by Toad the Wet Sprocket.