Ocean City Free Public Library Book Blog

       Landline is the latest novel by Rainbow Rowell, and author who has written both adult and YA romance novels. Landline follows the story of TV writer Georgie McCool as she struggles to balance her work life and her home life, while the state of her marriage declines. When she attempts to postpone a family holiday vacation as the result of an emergency at work, her husband, Neal, insists on taking their children home for Christmas anyway without Georgie. During the holiday week, Georgie tries to call Neal at his mother's house--however Neal's habit of never charging his cell phone leads to Georgie resorting to her parent's old rotary land-line phone to call Neal's mother's land-line. What Georgie soon realises is that this land-line connection allows her to call Neal in the past before they were ever married. Georgie now has an opportunity to either fix her marriage before it begins or to end it and see if they would have been better off never being marr...

An act so simple winds up creating the most compelling story that could happen to anyone with elderly parents. Park So-nyo is on her way to meet her children in Seoul when she vanishes at the train station. As the days turn into weeks with no sign of their mother, the family copes with the anguish over their major loss. The book has 4 major chapter/perspectives- So-nyo's eldest daughter, eldest son, husband and then So-nyo herself. As the novel unwinds, readers find out more and more about the woman who has done everything in her power to keep her (ungrateful) family happy and stable. All families have their secrets, but as the primary caretaker in the house, "Mom" has the most. Please Look after Mom was a bestseller in Korea and only recently was translated into English. Readers may be slightly turned off by the second-person narrative style (which really isn't used all that frequently in contemporary fiction), but one gets used to it fairly quickly. I absolutely LO...