Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Plot/Storyline: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥 (I think there’s some implied bedroom action?)
Humor: Yes
Perspective: third person from the hero mostly, email perspective from the heroine with her emails back and forth with her friend, (maybe a bit more from her at the end?)
Cliffhanger: No
Epilogue: I don’t recall one but I listened to audio and already returned it!
Format: audiobook checked out through my library’s Libby app

Should I read in order?
I believe this is a stand alone?

Basic plot:
Lincoln is an internet security officer and ends up reading way too many emails from Beth. So many, he gets feelings, but how can he act on them?

Give this a try if you want:
- contemporary romance-ish (much of the book reads more like fiction with plenty of focus on the character’s pasts)
- I put contemporary but is 24 years ago considered historical yet??? lol this takes place during the Y2K scare of 1999/2000
- low to no steam – there’s some mention towards the end but nothing I’d count or remember
- work place romance-ish
- lots of shorter chapters (80-90 chapters!)
- midwest setting


Ages:
- I believe both mains are in their late 20s


My thoughts:
I picked up this book as a read along I saw on instagram (from Becky Banks!) - I was eager to try something I might not usually pick up.

This book did have some cute parts in it. I didn’t hate it. But I didn’t love it either. I chose the audio and the voices for Beth and Jennifer were very similar and I’ll be honest I kept getting mixed up on who was who and who had a boyfriend and who was pregnant lol. So that made it harder at first to really get to know the heroine. I think this wouldn’t have been a problem reading it – the email form the way it flowed back and forth just made it hard to tell on audio who was who.

I was REALLY disappointed in the fact that anything between the hero and heroine was crammed at the very end. I think we were at 80% and they still haven’t even MET? Or talked? Or really seen each other??? So strange for me and why I hesitate to even call this a romance.

I can see why this book rubs some people the wrong way. The hero is a bit stalker-y. But I am able to forgive that stuff because (1) I love toxic behavior in fiction (2) the hero confessed his behavior and completely left it up to the heroine to decide what to do. I can forgive that – I think if we know what the person is thinking and feeling we should be okay to support their choices.

I could have definitely used more interaction between the two main people (this was really a story about Lincoln’s life), more steam, more time with them together at the end...I’m not sure if I would read another Rainbow Rowell because she might not be for me but I’m happy to have tried this book and gotten out of my comfort zone of normal reads.

Content warnings:

- feelings of infidelity – Beth has a boyfriend but still is attracted to and follows another man, hero remembers his high school girl friend cheating on him
- talk of unwanted pregnancy
- some cringey language/insults used and some outdated lingo – jokes about fetal alcohol syndrome, gypsy used, indian style used, retarded used as an insult
- miscarriage
- bad break up on page
- stalker-ish behavior

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

 
Some mention of being together at the end. I didn’t note it, it was vague.