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Landline: A Novel
Landline: A Novel
Landline: A Novel
Audiobook9 hours

Landline: A Novel

Written by Rainbow Rowell

Narrated by Rebecca Lowman

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this audiobook

From the New York Times bestselling author of Eleanor & Park and Fangirl, comes a hilarious, heart-wrenching take on love, marriage, and magic phones.

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 beside the point now.
Maybe that was always beside 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 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?

Editor's Note

Humor & a magic phone…

In her return to adult literature, Rowell uses her signature humor and a magic phone to explore whether young love like in “Eleanor & Park” can survive the everyday pressures of caring for family and achieving career goals.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 8, 2014
ISBN9781427239334
Author

Rainbow Rowell

Rainbow Rowell lives in Omaha, Nebraska, with her family. She's the author of Eleanor & Park, Fangirl, Attachments, Landline, Pumpkinheads, Scattered Showers, and the Simon Snow trilogy.

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Reviews for Landline

Rating: 3.637973672487644 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

1,214 ratings118 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I dunno. It had some cute parts, but this book just made me angsty and frustrated. And kinda depressed. Maybe because Georgie and Neal and all the characters are just at a completely different point in their lives than me. I mean. Georgie had a 7 year old kid! She had been married for over a decade. A decade ago I was a freshman in high school. I'm not ready for a midlife crisis. And I didn't find it very fun to be thrust into someone else's. I did like that not everything was as 1st person absorbed as YA tends to be. But for real. This books was frustrating because Georgie was frustrated and there was nothing she or I could do about it. I had to set it down several times because I just couldn't take any more.

    I liked that these characters, while being super animated larger than life Rainbow Rowell creations, did have realistic struggles and feelings. I liked the concept of a time travel phone. I liked the backup characters a lot. Georgie's mom. Scotty. Noomi, the daughter who thinks she's a kitty. Come on. That's just the kind of ridiculous thing a kid would do. Adorable and kinda annoying. I just didn't like the feelings this book made me feel. Like all the worst "no one understands me, I can't get through to anyone even though I won't talk to anyone" angst that made the first half of Goblet of Fire and all of Order of the Phoenix so tough to slog through.

    Maybe I'm just not ready to plunge into the genre of mid life crisis fiction. Whatever. I'm gonna go get my degree in oceanography now.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I think I'm too old to read these type of books anymore. It was entertaining, I guess, but there really wasn't anything memorable about it, plot or character-wise. Generously giving it 3 stars because it managed to get me out of a tiny reading slump after a couple of super busy weeks!
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    This was not a very good book. I thought that it was YA but I don't actually think it was. There was too much use of the f word. YA books will use just about all the other cuss words in the English language, but they don't usually use the f word. Plus the main characters were thirty-something. Late thirties even, and in YA books the characters are rarely over the age of twenty-four.

    The book just didn't hold my interest. I wouldn't have even finished it if I hadn't been listening to it on audio book. I didn't care that much about any of the characters. I felt bad for Georgie's kids because it's hard to have a parent who acts like the most important thing in their life is work. I felt bad for Georgie because her husband, what was his name? That's a record, for me to forget a character's name less then five minutes after I finished reading it. Anyway, I felt bad for Georgie because her husband wasn't very nice to her. I felt bad for Georgie's husband because she acted like her job was way more important then him or their daughters. There's nothing wrong with loving your work, but she was more in love to her job then him. I felt bad for Georgie's best friend, who's name I also don't remember, because he was in love with Georgie and missed his chance to be with her. So I felt sort of bad for all the characters in this book, but I never really cared about what happened to them. I also felt that it was sort of weird that Georgie didn't tell her husband that she'd been talking to his past self and find out that he had never realized that when he was talking to her that weekend that he was talking to her fourteen years in the future.

    Even though I felt bad for the characters, I never really cared for them. It was really more like I felt pity for them. I think the only thing that I really liked in this book was that it was shown that marriage really is hard. You have to work at it, and I guess I liked that it looked like Georgie's marriage wasn't going to end (at least at the end of the book, who knows what will happen in the years out past that unless Georgie stops neglecting her family for her work. But mostly I really didn't care about this book or its characters. I was trying to decide whether I'd give the book one star or two, but I think I'll just give it one. I saw in other people's reviews that they thought Rainbow Rowell's other books were better, so maybe I'll give some of the other ones a chance yet, but I do not recommend this book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I wish things had been drawn out a little longer, but ultimately, it also made sense for things to work out that way. Keep in mind the repeating the name of the main character's husband may border on annoying as you go on.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Absolutely positively undeniably wonderful. Practically fell in love with this book from page one.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It's great, really. Probably not for younger audiences (what do I know? I'm barely 25) but it's real, relatable and yet really sweet. Gave me the good old chill every great romance novel does. Highly recommend.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    4 Stars

    “You don't know when you're twenty-three.
    You don't know what it really means to crawl into someone else's life and stay there. You can't see all the ways you're going to get tangled, how you're going to bond skin to skin. How the idea of separating will feel in five years, in ten - in fifteen. When Georgie thought about divorce now, she imagined lying side by side with Neal on two operating tables while a team of doctors tried to unthread their vascular systems.
    She didn't know at twenty-three.”

    Landline was my second novel by Rainbow Rowell and it was truly a great read. Being the first adult novel I've read in what seems like eternity, I was a little skeptical.

    The first of the story was a bit on the slow side, but it was still just enough to keep me reading.

    The landline aspect of the novel was great, but the one thing I didn't like was that we never really learned why she got to talk to Neal in 1998. What was the point? Was it to remind her of what she wanted? Was the whole few days a complete hallucination? Not likely, but regardless, we weren't told.

    I loved that the characters were real. I honestly didn't like Georgie 90% of the time, and that was okay because characters, like people, can't be perfect all the time. My heart hurt for Neal and I applauded him for being such a great father and loving husband despite the circumstances.

    The book also did a great job highlighting both the wonderful and rocky aspects of marriage.

    By the end of the book I did have a smile on my face and the first thing I did was grab my husband, kiss him, and remind him how lucky I am to have him.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A friend of mine suggested this book. I had it on my list and when it came available in audio I decided to give it a try. The story was a little on the "make-believe" side. At times I had difficulty believing what was going on in the story. I have a hard time feeling sorry for ladies that can not function without a man. The story did entertain me a little so I am happy I gave the book a try. The ending did not surprise me. I have another of this author's books on my list, so I will give her another try later this year,
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Didn’t read any reviews before I started this book, I just needed something to listen to to distract me. None of the characters were likable. The idea is cool and interesting but this was more depressing than it was romantic or entertaining. I finished it all just because i wanted to know the ending or just because I was hoping it would get better.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Wow, And I thought attachments was good ? ♥️ #
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A compelling story that reminds us to remember the young person that you were as well as the young person you fell in love with. So many times, the very traits the endeared your love to your heart are the same ones being viewed so negatively when there is trouble in a relationship!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Sweet, nostalgic. I didn't like it as much as some of her young adult novels but it was good.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I liked this, but not quite as well as her books targeted toward young adults.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Georgie McCool's marriage is in trouble, it has been for a long time. She still loves her husband, Neal, and Neal loves her - but that's besides the point.

    Two days before they're supposed to leave Los Angeles, California to visit Neal's family in Omaha, Nebraska for Christmas, Georgie tells Neal she can't go. She's a TV writer and a possibility of her own showing being picked up as arisen. She expects Neal to be upset with her - he's usually a little upset with her - but she doesn't expect him to pack up the kids and go home without her.

    That night at her Mother's house, Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past. It's not exactly time travel, but the landline lets her call back in time to college-aged Neal, right before he proposed to her. Georgie feels like she's been given an opportunity to fix her marriage before it starts... but she isn't sure what she needs to do, or if that would even be a good idea... would Neal and Georgie be better off without being together?

    So, I didn't hate this book, but it wasn't my favorite book of all times either. I think it was mostly because I didn't like Neal. He just wasn't a likeable character for me and I found it hard to root for Georgie and his relationship. A small part of me almost wanted them to not get back together - but a bigger part of me still wanted them together, it was a tug-of-war battle for me.

    I'm not a big Romance genre reader, but I did feel like this was more about the hardship of a relationship and the give and take of marriage type of thing. I'm also not married with kids and an attention taking job, so maybe I didn't relate to it as much as another reader might.

    I will say Georgie's voice was very genuine. She opened up her heart and showed the reader all the truths about her life and relationship. She was an honest character to read about. Though I still struggled with liking her character here and there (like the whole phone battery situation... girl, go get it fixed, it will take all of 5 minutes).

    This is a cute, marriage relationship struggle book. Definitely a fiction book and not a YA, which is what a lot of readers probably think of when they see Rainbow Rowell. It's also set around Christmas! Might have been a cutesy book to have read layers up with blankets on my couch in December and not in the middle of April.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    fiction (sort of time-travel/romance). I liked this because Rainbow Rowell writes excellent characters, but the Christmas-y plotline toward the end smacked a bit of a Hallmark movie (with a slightly more diverse cast).
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    3.5 stars

    I'm a bit ones and twos about this book. Overall, I liked it. At its core it's the story of a woman figuring out her marriage, and where she's made mistakes over the course of her marriage.

    It was the specific...quirks...of Georgie's that made me a little crazy, and which is the source of my ambivalence. Basically, Georgie is the kind of person who would drive me crazy if I knew her IRL. Her phone battery won't keep a charge, but she can't be bothered to replace the battery or get a new phone. (I understand that this is crucial to the plot of the book, but it still makes me crazy.) She hasn't bothered to buy clothes that fit her properly after her second child was born. If someone else doesn't fix her food, she doesn't eat. She's just a giant, walking, "can't be bothered" sign, and that drives me nuts. (Also, the fact that she doesn't tell anyone about the weirdness going on didn't seem realistic (I know, I know). If something like that happened to me, I'd at least tell someone close to me. (Yes, also a requirement of the plot, but ugh.))

    Thankfully, over the course of the book she kind of comes to realize these things about herself. She's never been required to grow up, really, even when becoming a professional, because her professional life is a perfect extension of her college life, doing essentially the same job with the same person. And Neal took care of her the same way he took care of her daughters. Georgie's sister Heather seems to have the clearest view of Georgie, and I found her really refreshing.

    I listened to the audiobook version, and the narrator was lovely.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    A book about a woman's mid-life crisis. A series of mind numbing dialogues of no consequence interspersed with repetitive self-torturing monologues of a woman who feels guilty for putting her job ahead of her family. There is no plot.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Like looking in a mirror. I had tears in my eyes through most of this book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    3.5 Clever and pleasant and just right for right now - it's a great reminder about not taking people (especially spouses) for granted. Georgie McCool is a Tina Fey-type comedy writer in LA with a high-pressure job and unforgiving deadlines. An important one has just come up: the chance to pitch her own show to a media mogul - 2 days after Christmas. This means she bails on the long-planned trip with her husband Neal and young daughters to his family in Omaha, NE to stay in CA and work on the show with her long-time best friend/business partner, Seth. Essentially she is choosing her job over her family and Seth over Neal. Georgie messes up the time zones when she tries to call, forgets to charge her own phone, and Neal won't answer his, so communication becomes challenging and Neal essentially goes incommunicado because he is rightfully angry over the turn of events. We learn he is the stay-at-home Dad to the 2 little girls, he cooks, does the laundry, puts up with Georgie's erratic hours and basically suffers in silence. In his absence, Georgie starts to see what a good thing she's got. The twist that makes this and explains the title, is that the only way Georgie is able to get thru to Neal is on the landline phone in her mother's house to the landline phone at Neal's mother's house. BUT, those calls are taking place in 1998 at the turning point in their young relationship when they first got together. It gets a little mind-bendy - for me - and Georgie but the ultimate goal is served. Rowell is so good at depicting relationships in all their private quirkiness and the little things that create attraction and build foundations for long-term. And though it's a rom-com, no one is perfect and the characters aren't always likeable. Rowell always stays grounded in reality. A couple samples of her wisdom: "You don't know what it really means to crawl into someone else's life and stay there. You can't see all the ways you're going to get tangled, how you're going to bond skin to skin." (p.201) and "That's what love is. Accidental damage protection." (p.244) Without giving much away, Georgie has her Georg(ie) Bailey Christmas miracle moment which makes for a satisfying ending, but I wanted to know more about the after - and the magic phone.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Nobody writes snappy, heartfelt dialogue like Rainbow Rowell.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5


    Landline, by Rainbow Rowell

    I have never read a novel by Rowell before, so color me genuinely surprised when I liked this one as much as I did. Her dialogue is stellar, and I always manage to find myself amazed at how easy it is. How natural and real and flowing. People do speak to each other this way, and it's refreshing to read a story where I'm not rolling my eyes every other page and thinking, "Who says crap like that ?!" I spent a nice couple of days, sick in bed with the flu or something, and thoroughly enjoying listening to this novel on audiobook form. The narrator is SO splendid, she made it sound SO REAL...! Kudos to the people who hired this lady, I loved her.

    I'll also admit that the main reason I'd put off reading or listening to this book was because the premise made me think there wasn't going to be any of the thrills of a budding new relationship. The main character is already married, and has been for 16 years. And they're having some serious problems. The reader is treated to both sides of their relationship; the emotionally painful current issues and the heart-wrenchingly sweet and adorable moments when they first fell in love. Starting out, you don't know where this is going to go. You get an immediate sense that Neal might be kind of an ass, but he's just a regular dude with a few issues. The amazing thing about Rowell's characterization is that Neal managed to make me like him even though he's not the kind of guy I could ever find myself falling for. That's rare. Also, while I found Georgie to be unbelievably selfish, I still rooted for her. I still cared about her even as I fantasized about strangling her with her damned rotary phone. The smallest of their daughters had decided she was a green cat, and Meowed. A lot. And I found it totally adorable, and NOT because I actually know a child who did this very same thing. It was not annoyingly constant, thank goodness.

    So really, I loved this book. I really think the characters were all so real and so likable despite their flaws. It made me laugh, it made me worry, and it really made me take a good look at my own life/relationship to make sure I'm working as hard as I can from each and every point onward. And all the low ratings....? Wow. I guess People just do not appreciate how good Rainbow Rowell's writing is. Oh well. I suppose it's to be expected considering we are living in the age of the overwrought cliche and the newest sex-type-thing.

    It left me feeling so happy and hopeful and I really couldn't put it down the whole time I was reading it. Highly recommended. 4 solid stars.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I don't typically pick up books like this - it's a love story, and I'm typically someone who picks adventure stories over stories about relationships. But, I'm so glad I took a chance with this book.

    This wasn't just a typical love story, this was a multifaceted love story. It's about Georgie's love for her husband, children, best friend, and even about the relationships of the people around her. It was funny, thoughtful and tragic.

    I liked Georgie. She seemed realistic and she was written to be an honest portrait of someone who's flawed and real. It's her fault that her marriage is crumbling and she's going to have to deal with the effects everything has on her relationship with her best friend / co-worker and her career. Her reactions to the "magic" landline felt real - she was confused and her thoughts about it were chaotic and hopeful.

    Overall, I just really enjoyed this book.

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    When Georgie decides she needs to stay home and work over the Christmas holiday (she’s a script writer and she has a deadline to get multiple new scripts done for her dream show in a short time), her husband takes their two daughters to his “home” in Nebraska for the holiday. Georgie has trouble getting ahold of her husband on the phone, but does manage on her mom’s landline. BUT, it appears that the Neal she has gotten ahold of is not her current husband; the Neal on the other end of the landline is the Neal she knew before she married him… she is talking to the Neal from 15 years ago!Both main characters were very unlikable. Neal did not come off as a nice person, at all, in my opinion, and Georgie was such a whiner and acted like she was still a teenager, all angsty over the holiday separation. I also had a hard time, at times, figuring out if we were in current day or flashing back to when they were both younger or if it was current-day Georgie talking on the landline to younger Neal. I listened to the audio, which was fine and held my attention, but overall I was disappointed. Even still, I’m rating it ok, but I think I liked the premise more than the execution of it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    More adult than YA but realistic snapshot of a turning point in a marriage, with a fanciful twist (her old dial up phone at her mother's place dials up her husband in the past!)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    4 Stars

    “You don't know when you're twenty-three.
    You don't know what it really means to crawl into someone else's life and stay there. You can't see all the ways you're going to get tangled, how you're going to bond skin to skin. How the idea of separating will feel in five years, in ten - in fifteen. When Georgie thought about divorce now, she imagined lying side by side with Neal on two operating tables while a team of doctors tried to unthread their vascular systems.
    She didn't know at twenty-three.”

    Landline was my second novel by Rainbow Rowell and it was truly a great read. Being the first adult novel I've read in what seems like eternity, I was a little skeptical.

    The first of the story was a bit on the slow side, but it was still just enough to keep me reading.

    The landline aspect of the novel was great, but the one thing I didn't like was that we never really learned why she got to talk to Neal in 1998. What was the point? Was it to remind her of what she wanted? Was the whole few days a complete hallucination? Not likely, but regardless, we weren't told.

    I loved that the characters were real. I honestly didn't like Georgie 90% of the time, and that was okay because characters, like people, can't be perfect all the time. My heart hurt for Neal and I applauded him for being such a great father and loving husband despite the circumstances.

    The book also did a great job highlighting both the wonderful and rocky aspects of marriage.

    By the end of the book I did have a smile on my face and the first thing I did was grab my husband, kiss him, and remind him how lucky I am to have him.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I'm updating my review after my second read of this book

    The first time I read through this book I didn't really want to say how much I loved it, I did in my own life talk about it but online I kept hushed about it

    What I love about this book is that it's Adults in a real world with that Rainbow Rowell touch of magic.
    The characters seem real and the thoughts they have while not always good, okay, or acceptable are real flawed human thoughts. I enjoy that I could see me having a real talk with these characters. They feel real enough to me and I like the lack of "we gotta set up a world that's better than our world and everything has to be a moral"

    Well I guess every book/story has a moral but they don't all have to be magic sometimes it's as simple as a promise you won't be able to keep perfectly and a magic fucking phone. And I'm here for that writing and characters I can say "same, girl, same" with, ones I can find dreamy ((even lacking cheek bones that are sharp enough to kill)), get annoyed with or at and in the end feel like it's a whole book I can connect with.

    So forgive me for my past rating sins I love this book flaws included
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Better than Fangirl, not as good as Eleanor & Park.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Rainbow Rowell can write dialogue that is clever and raw. She has a distinct style and I find it captivating. She has a gift for connecting the reader to her characters. I love the hidden gems of Omaha in her novels. Landline is a quick read about a wife in the middle of a marriage crisis with her husband. To figure things out she recalls how they met and how they worked through their first fight.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Cute premise, but I never really liked the characters.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It's very different from her other books. but somehow I just loved it!