Recent Reads: Emma by Jane Austen & Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Rather than do a traditional review for the most recent books I've read I thought I'd lump them together into one semi-ramble of a post as I feel like they're both pretty popular and you probably know a lot about both of them.

First up was Emma by Jane Austen and I have to say I loved this book, like loved even more than Pride and Prejudice. It was overall more of a fun read and Emma is exactly the type of humorous main character whom I adored reading about. One of the things I love about Jane Austen is the time she invests in her characters. Emma's character development is subtle as is the growing romance between Emma and Mr Knightley and it made me realise that a lot of modern day books can learn a thing or two from how she crafts a story. Also I have to take a moment to say that I am now a Mr Knightley fan girl and that Emma reinforces my belief that nice guys do finish first.

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell is another book I had been wanting to pick up for ages having loved Landline by the same author. Set in 1999 the nostalgic elements of this book really appealed to me and the subtle character progression is another reason why I love Rainbow Rowell's writing. If you don't know much about Attachments it's about Lincoln - an IT graduate who is employed to monitor the use of internal emails at a newspaper - who then falls for a journalist through reading her hilarious email conversations.

This story is funny and cute and I really enjoyed all the little details that Rainbow Rowell crafts into her stories to bring her characters into vivid life. The only thing that threw me with this book was that Lincoln's character had his heart broken as a teenager by his first love and was still getting over it ten years later which is a looong time considering how many girls were flirting with him at his IT job. I don't know why but coupled with the fact that we only get a proper description of Lincoln halfway through the book (and it's good he's tall and cute) just made me think there's no way a guy like that would get through almost ten years of being at University and not date any other girls. Minor niggling details aside I loved the main characters in Attachments as well as the side characters who all had very strongly crafted personalities and storylines.