Landline by Rainbow Rowell. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book is about a woman called Georgie McCool. Georgie knows that her marriage is in trouble. Georgie and her husband Neal love each other very much but that almost seems besides the point now. She knows that Neal is unhappy and has been for a long time.

Georgie is a TV writer and two days before they are due to go to Omaha to visit Neal's mum, she tells her husband Neal that she is unable to go. The show that her and he co-worker and best friend Seth have been dreaming of is going ahead and she needs to stay in Los Angeles and complete some work before the deadline. She knew that Neal was going to be upset with her but she does not expect him to take their children and go anyway , leaving her alone at Christmas. She really believes that this is the end of her marriage. Whilst visiting her mum she finds her old landline phone in her former bedroom and finds that she is able to speak to the Neal of 15 years ago before they were married.

I would firstly like to say that rather than 4 stars I would give this 3 and a half. The book did not quite live up to my expectations. I really thought that Rainbow missed a huge opportunity here. The book was not nearly as fast paced or as exciting as I thought it was going to be. She could have explored the time travelling (if you can call it that) element of the story a bit more. It was almost as though she was afraid to go there. The book did not explore the whys or the wherefores of the phone. It just seemed to be a tool the author used to connect to the past.

The story takes place between 17th December and the 25th December but it feels like longer. It has a good balance of the past and the present. We get to to learn about how the relationship between and Georgie and Neal started and how their relationship ended up as it has.The book was a bit slow in places for me, which was disappointing. What this book did do was make me stop and think about how much we take people for granted. It also poses the question, if you had the opportunity to go back and change the past would we? I loved all the characters in the book and the relationships that are explored. I felt the ending was very predictable and I had probably had an idea of the ending from the first page.

In conclusion, the book did sit and make me think about some of the bigger questions in life but it could have been so much better!