Do you believe in love before first sight?

As the internet took off, and more and more offices started letting their employees access it for their work, the more controlling of managers started to worry. How would they ever be able to keep their employees from going to 'illicit websites,' or spending all their time monitoring their Fantasy Football leagues? Especially in a workplace like a newsroom, where they can't effectively implement a web filter. So what is a company to do?

In Rainbow Rowell's Attachments, Lincoln O'Neill is the first line of defense against internet abuse for the newspaper he works for. Working overnights, he goes through a folder of all the emails that their security system flags as 'inappropriate' and decides whether to send a warning letter to the offender. Hardly what he expected when he signed up for a job in IT Security, but it pays well and isn't exactly a demanding job.

In between raunchy forwarded jokes and gossip about peoples' weekend plans, he stumbles upon the conversation chains between Beth Fremont and Jennifer Scribner-Snyder. Best friends and coworkers, Beth and Jennifer spend their afternoons at work gossiping about their lives via email. Beth is in a relationship that is stagnating with a guy who refuses to grow up, while Jennifer's husband keeps hinting about how cool babies are. Their personal lives play out via email, and every night Lincoln finds the latest installment in his flagged email folder.

By the time he remembers that he really ought to warn them about using the company email for personal use, it's far too late to send them a warning. He doesn't really want to anyway; these emails are the highlight of his night. He hasn't exactly been getting out much; he's moved back in with his mother after his latest round of university classes and his love life, as it were, stalled out the first year after high school. His sister means well, trying to get him to move out, join a gym, meet new people, but that's made even harder when you work nights.

And he just might be falling for Beth.

Whether she's writing about teens or adults, current day or the long-ago 1980s, Rainbow Rowell shows her understanding of people in a way that is hard to find. Through their highs and lows, Beth and Jennifer have a friendship that is special, and yet exactly what one would expect. They get wrapped up in their own lives and feel terrible when they forget to check in on the other. Lincoln loves his mother, and doesn't want to leave her in the house by herself, but part of him still wants to go off on his own. And everyone clings to the status quo, even when stepping out into the unknown might pay off in spades.

Highs: Seeing a chick-lit style book with a male main character is a rather interesting twist.

Lows: A few parts dragged, and perhaps Lincoln should have listened to his sister sooner, but that's minor.

Verdict: A must-read, especially for the older fans of her YA books.

Further Reading: Eleanor and Park, 'My Sister's Song', Landline

Remember when you had to work up the courage to hold a girl's hand?

Betrayal. Revenge. Sparkly vampires and emo witches. Recently, young adult romances have been very much like adult bodice-rippers, but with teenagers in high school instead of neglected housewives or lonely lasses on the Scottish Highland.

Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor and Park bucks this trend with the most realistic young adult romance in years.

Park is the son of an Army veteran and his Korean wife. They don't live in the best neighborhood but they get by. His mother sells Avon and takes pride in her house and her sons. His dad is hard on him, and tends to favor his more traditionally masculine brother, but is still involved in his life and does the best he knows how. He's hardly a popular kid, and Taekwondo isn't enough to make him sporty, but he has is place on the bus and headphones to block out most of the noise from his classmates.

For all that Park's family does the best with what they have, Eleanor's family is an all too common disaster. As the oldest child, she stilll remembers how it was when her parents were still together. She remembers her mother baking cookies and making Christmas dinners. She remembers the kids having their own rooms, not to mention their own beds.

She remembers a time before her stepfather Ritchie. Before being sent to their shared bedroom at 4:30pm. Before having her mother guard the bathroom without a door while she takes as quick a bath as possible. After a year's exile to the friend of the family's house, Eleanor is back with her mother and siblings, and is determined to make the best of it.

Like most relationships, it isn't love at first sight. In fact, it is nearly the exact opposite. Not hatred, but an almost complete indifference. But as Eleanor and Park share a bus seat, and English class, they both begin to thaw towards one another. In typical 1980s fashion it begins with mix tapes and comic books, and slowly it develops into one of the most truthful, honest relationships I've ever read.

High school is hard. Some people have money and charisma and it's not so bad for them. Some people don't, but a loving family can make up for a lot, and fore them it can be tolerated. Some kids go through hell; tortured at school because kids are cruel, and then go home each night to another kind of nightmare.

Sometimes, two kids from very different backgrounds find one another, and together pull each other through.

Highs: Everyone in this book, from the overenthusiastic teacher to to Park's mother, react in very authentic ways.

Lows: That said, Eleanor's siblings didn't always ring true to me.

Verdict: Eleanor and Park transports the reader to those days in high school when life was harder than it should be and you couldn't do anything about it.

Further Reading: Fangirl, Beautiful Creatures, Moribito