Landline

What I love about Rainbow Rowell's writing, whether she's writing adult or YA fiction, is how unadorned and engaging it is. She makes writing and storytelling look effortless, and her dialogue is fresh and real. Landline is the first of Rowell's adult fiction I've read, and I loved it. I love the mystery of the magic phone, and the layers it adds to the dynamic and development of the relationship and the main character. It's a way for us to be able to look back at how the relationship developed and how it got here; it's also a way for the main character to engage with the past and evolve. Its magic is never explained, which I'm okay with.

The other thing I adore about Rainbow Rowell is that she gets relationships. She captures the thrill and breathlessness and joy of teenage loves, first loves, and the beginnings of relationships. With Landline, she also captures the quiet fire that is a long-term relationship, and how that fire either gets maintained or smothered to embers. Her characters aren't always the most likeable (whatever that means), but they're complex and messy and trying to figure shit out – just like real people. I've read Eleanor and Park, Fangirl, and Landline, and I've seen myself in each of those books. That feels really difficult to do.

I finished Landline while flying across the country with a terrible cold. Maybe it was exhaustion, but the last third of Landline kept punching me in the heart and I finally broke out into an ugly-cry on the plane. I tried to hide it, because I was sitting close to the bathroom and people were constantly walking past my seat or standing in line next to my seat, but I finally thought, “Oh, fuck it. This book deserves an ugly cry at 10,000 feet.”