Review: Landline

 Rainbow Rowell does it again, this time in Landline. 

Do you believe in magic? Or fate? Or karma? 

What about time travel?

Or, what about magic phones that may or may not grant the ability to time travel…sort of?

Georgie McCool is exactly who you expect her to be based on her name. She is cool. She is a screenwriter for a wildly popular television show (the she hates) and, along with her best friend and writing partner, Seth, has bee given the opportunity of a lifetime; to write a pilot for their OWN show.

But Georgie hasn’t always been a screenwriter. In college, Georgie was just one of the few females in the writing room at her college paper. She is a badass when it comes to working in a male dominated field, that is until she sees Neal. When Neal is around, Georgie McCool is anything but cool. And Neal, well, he is the epitome of cool, as the cartoonist for the paper; unless you ask Seth, in which case Neal is a Hobbit.

Unbeknownst to Georgie, Neal is engaged to the girl-next-door, who also happens to be half a continent away, when they meet. But Georgie and Neal keep crossing paths, either by fate, by chance, or on purpose, until Neal ends his engagement to actively pursue Georgie.

Fast-forward several years and Georgie and Neal are married with two young daughters. Neal’s mother lives in Nebraska, where they have planned to spend Christmas. And the days leading up to Christmas also happen to be the days in which Georgie and Seth are going to have to dodge sleep and wrack their brains in order to write the pilot of their dreams.

Rowell gets to the heart of what matters most in Landline. Georgie is forced to weigh her family against her dream. Which holds more weight in her heart?

Georgie watches her husband and daughters leave for Nebraska without her. A decision she made. She spends her days with Seth writing and brainstorming, repeating as necessary, until she can barely drag herself out of bed at her mother’s house in the morning, running on no sleep and wearing the same clothes day after day.

In the midst of all the chaos that Georgie’s life has devolved into, she finds a yellow rotary phone at her mother’s house that she decides to use to call Neal on his mother’s landline. The result…must be a dream. Or is it?

Through the yellow rotary phone plugged into the wall of her childhood bedroom, Georgie is somehow able to call Neal roughly two decades in the past. Neal in the past has no idea he is talking to Georgie in the present, and Georgie in the present has no idea how these conversations will affect her present. All she knows is, she has no idea how any of this is possible and she loves Neal. But is love enough?

Read Landline to see what happens between Georgie and Neal: will they end up together? Is the telephone really magic? Or is life and fate a wild rollercoaster of unexpected twists and turns?