At the start of the year, I challenged myself to read 24 books this 2015. Well, it’s almost the end of the year and I am not even halfway through meeting that challenge. I pledged to read 24 books this year because I thought it’s something I can easily meet after successfully meeting my GoodReads challenge last year.

Anyway this is not to say I’m already giving up. There’s still a couple more days left in December for me to complete the challenge. For now, let me share with you another Rainbow Rowell book I recently read.

The plot: Beth Fremont and Jennifer Scribner-Snyder know that somebody is monitoring their work e-mail. (Everybody in the newsroom knows. It’s company policy.) But they can’t quite bring themselves to take it seriously. They go on sending each other endless and endlessly hilarious e-mails, discussing every aspect of their personal lives.

Meanwhile, Lincoln O’Neill can’t believe this is his job now- reading other people’s e-mail. When he applied to be “internet security officer,” he pictured himself building firewalls and crushing hackers- not writing up a report every time a sports reporter forwards a dirty joke.

When Lincoln comes across Beth’s and Jennifer’s messages, he knows he should turn them in. But he can’t help being entertained-and captivated-by their stories.

By the time Lincoln realizes he’s falling for Beth, it’s way too late to introduce himself.

What would he say . . . ?



I enjoyed reading this book. I thought the overall story is cute. I could picture myself and Maila as Beth and Jennifer because we used to gab a lot virtually too while at the office except we didn’t use email. We used a private message program installed by the office and Yahoo Messenger. Sometimes we gabbed on Facebook. 

The story is set in the late 90s when there was a whole lot of buzz about the Millennium bug and how it was going to cause a system crash in the PC come 12 midnight of the year 2000. I remember that era because I was in high school during that time and Internet was fairly new. 
I thought that Beth and Jen were awesome women. Very relatable. Like I said, I could picture Maila and I as them. I also found them to be witty, strong and smart women judging from the email exchanges they sent each other. 

Lincoln, the hero of the book, I could picture him as this big and cute guy. But personality wise I didn’t like him. He wasn’t very sociable and he didn’t have a lot of direction in life. He didn’t really know what he wanted to do so he kept going back to school to study. But I appreciate his transformation – from this lost and brokenhearted guy to someone who finally decided it was time to become an adult and move on with life. 


Though I liked reading Jen and Beth’s private conversations throughout the book, after some time I was beginning to find it dragging.

I thought the story of Lincoln and Beth was cute. Especially when Lincoln started reading about Beth’s office crush which got him real jealous and then realizing it was him all along!    



I would go and recommend reading this book. It’s such a feel good.