Rainbow Rowell is best known for her young adult novels, Eleanor & Park (one of the best YA novels I have ever read) and Fangirl (which many people like even more than Eleanor & Park, and which my 12-year-old daughter will kill me soon for not having read). I have Rowell’s new grownup book, Landline, but because I am contrary (HA HA 12-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER I HAVEN’T READ THE FAULT IN OUR STARS EITHER COME AT ME BRO) I decided to read her 2011 grownup e-pistolary novel Attachments instead.

Attachments is fluffy historical fiction, set in 1999, when everyone was in a tizzy about the impending Y2K global meltdown that did not happen.

Our hero Lincoln is a menschy nerd in his late 20s — a perpetual student who doesn’t quite know what he wants to do with his life, plays Dungeons & Dragons on weekends, still mourns the end of his first romance and lives with his mother.

What Lincoln thinks he looks like

What Lincoln actually looks like (in my head)

He’s hired as an IT consultant at a Nebraska newspaper, where he’s supposed to monitor employee email for “inappropriateness” and supervise the team of infinitely-geekier-geeks working on the paper’s Y2K preparedness. In the course of his human-firewall duties, he reads a few interoffice emails sent between Jennifer, a copy editor, and Beth, the paper’s film critic. Their missives have been flagged for bad words. Lincoln finds the friends funny and charming, and since their emails are only MARGINALLY inappropriate, he doesn’t send a warning. But as their correspondence continues, Lincoln gets more and more engaged in their banter and lives (Jennifer is married to the clearly awesome Mitch and waffling about having a baby; Beth lives with a smokin’ hot local rock star who embodies Boy Disease, blowing so hot and cold he messes with Beth’s head) and he knows he needs to apologize, or at least STOP READING THEIR MAIL, but he can’t.

Lincoln hates his job, and the more time passes, the less able he is to tell Beth and Jennifer he’s been reading their mouthy, profane, hilarious, loving, warm emails for weeks, because then he’ll seem like a stalker-y, unethical jerk. (Because basically, he’s being a stalker-y, unethical jerk.) And he’s gradually falling in love with Beth (kind, smart, hilarious, semi-dorky Beth whose boyfriend doesn’t deserve her) without ever having SEEN her, which is insane, and also every human woman’s fantasy.

What Beth looks like in my head (aka Rainbow Rowell)

I LOVED THIS BOOK. Jennifer and Beth have great banter, but also deep and abiding friendship (you know Rainbow Rowell is a Friend to Women if she writes female friendship this well). And Lincoln is screwed-up but fundamentally decent. And delicious.

And holy crap this book is funny.

It was terrible music to dance to: all you could really do was nod and hunch to the music. The girls all looked like they were listening to the same sad story: “Yes, yes, yes, that’s awful. Yes, yes, yes.”

“Stop talking to me like that,” he said. “Like what?” “Like I’m Lord Greystoke, and I need to be educated in the ways of man.”

Diet Coke and rum is the most moronic drink of all time. They should call it a Moron, so that girls who order it would have to call themselves out at the bar.

“Am I going to die?” he asked. “I hope so,” said Justin.

The crowd was mostly men, and the band onstage — Razorwine, according to their drum kit — sounded like somebody playing a Beastie Boys album over a table saw.

I’ve got the arms of a Sicilian grandmother. Arms for picking olives and stirring hearty tomato sauces.

I think I called him “a great horrible bastard.” Like I was swearing in a second language.

As the book progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that Lincoln will have to apologize for his creeper behavior. You think, “This apology had better be epic, because oy, Lincoln.” Sadly, if I told you what he says and how he apologizes it would ruin the plot for you, but IT MAY BE THE MOST SATISFYING LITERARY APOLOGY EVER.