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Emailing Allie
My name's Julie Lawson - I'm an HR Manager at BMT Publishing. Nearly six months ago my est friend, Allie Rainsbury, left the business.
Recently our MD sent a memo asking all BMT employees to clear their Inboxes and, since I had access to Allie's emails after her departure, I set about reviewing hers.
Her adventures were so entertaining that I didn't want to stop, let alone destroy them forever - instead I am determined to share her story with you.
As a new year dawns, Allie needs various questions answered. Among the most urgent are: Where is her future leading? Why are relationships so complex and confusing? Can she get through a day without five cups of tea? Hilarious, touching and unique, Emailing Allie delves into the life and loves of 31-year-old Allie Rainsbury. Through emails sent to her best-friend Julie, the smooth-talking David Marshall and the enigmatic Scott Cooper (to mention but a few) we are taken on an frenetic, funny and uplifting journey that charts her daily challenges both inside and outside the office.
Recently our MD sent a memo asking all BMT employees to clear their Inboxes and, since I had access to Allie's emails after her departure, I set about reviewing hers.
Her adventures were so entertaining that I didn't want to stop, let alone destroy them forever - instead I am determined to share her story with you.
As a new year dawns, Allie needs various questions answered. Among the most urgent are: Where is her future leading? Why are relationships so complex and confusing? Can she get through a day without five cups of tea? Hilarious, touching and unique, Emailing Allie delves into the life and loves of 31-year-old Allie Rainsbury. Through emails sent to her best-friend Julie, the smooth-talking David Marshall and the enigmatic Scott Cooper (to mention but a few) we are taken on an frenetic, funny and uplifting journey that charts her daily challenges both inside and outside the office.
496 pages, Paperback
First published September 21, 2012
4 people are currently reading
26 people want to read
About the author
Julie Lawson
55 books43 followersJulie Lawson is the award-winning author of many books for young people. Her novels include White Jade Tiger (winner of the Sheila A. Egoff Book Literature Prize and nominated for both the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year Award and the Silver Birch Award), Destination Gold, and The Ghost of Avalanche Mountain. Among her acclaimed picture books are The Dragon’s Pearl, Emma and the Silk Train, Bear on the Train, and Whatever You Do, Don’t Go Near That Canoe! Her most recent novel, Ghosts of the Titanic, was released in Spring 2011.
Some of the events written about in A Ribbon of Shining Steel were based on the real-life experiences of Julie’s own grandfather, John Anderson, who was among the many immigrants needed to keep the CPR running smoothly.
Julie lives in Victoria, British Columbia.
Some of the events written about in A Ribbon of Shining Steel were based on the real-life experiences of Julie’s own grandfather, John Anderson, who was among the many immigrants needed to keep the CPR running smoothly.
Julie lives in Victoria, British Columbia.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 8, 2023
This book is not in prose. It tells a story via a collection of emails between 2 friends working in the same office -Yes, similar to Rainbow Rowell’s “Attachments.” But the characters’ lives and situations are set a bit differently.
On the whole, I think Emailing Allie is actually a better execution of this style. It has more action and better phasing. Attachments felt hurried towards the end whilst this one took its time telling the story of the protagonist (it will actually leave you guessing who Allie will ends up with!). The ending is satisfying, realistic, and makes sense (since I’m a sucker for realistic stories😂 and this one’s a realistic romcom).
On the whole, I think Emailing Allie is actually a better execution of this style. It has more action and better phasing. Attachments felt hurried towards the end whilst this one took its time telling the story of the protagonist (it will actually leave you guessing who Allie will ends up with!). The ending is satisfying, realistic, and makes sense (since I’m a sucker for realistic stories😂 and this one’s a realistic romcom).
June 2, 2023
Loved this book! Decent and yet kept me on edge
October 22, 2012
This review was written for 'The Review Diaries' http://reviewdiaries.blogspot.co.uk/2...
Huge thanks to Cyder Press for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.
Emailing Allie is a fun chick lit told through a ‘diary’ of sorts – Allie’s inbox and sent mail tells a brilliant and funny tale of the last year of her life. The romances, the intrigues, and the many, many cups of tea.
I loved how the story is told through the emails that Allie sends and receives, it gave the whole book a real lift and made it a light fun read. It never got bogged down in too much detail, but when as a reader I wanted more detail, for example when Allie had been on a date, there was always just enough to satisfy. It’s a novel that very much relies on the reader’s imagination, and because I picked this up when I was having a bit of a reading slump it was really nice to breeze through a book that was on the whole light and not weighed down by too much detail and explanation. I also loved how we as the reader never actually see any of the key scenes, they are always told back through someone else’s eyes, and sometimes the details were unbearably slow to come out – details please! It felt like I was there, being copied in on all the emails and living vicariously through someone else’s gossip and I loved it.
You immediately get a sense of who Allie is, and whilst I felt a little bit strange and voyeuristic reading her emails, I quickly became so immersed in the story and just wanted to find out what happened, that I stopped noticing that it was someone’s personal emails.
I loved the humour, the lighter moments and the way that characters were constructed. A lot of the draw for me remains in the brevity and quick pace that the emails opened up.
It wasn’t all fluff and giggles though, I wasn’t expecting some of the darker and more emotional elements to creep in, but they did and added a certain weight to it that I actually really enjoyed and helped to balance everything out.
The one thing that I wasn’t as fussed on was the love triangle. It was quite stereotypical of the genre, and the rest of the book was such a fresh and entertaining concept I really wished that the romance could have been too. I also really struggle with the actions/attitude of one of the men in the triangle, but then I suppose that is always the way, people looking into a relationship can see how awful some people are being, whereas whilst you’re involved in it you don’t see it. So yes, I think it showed the relationship really realistically, but it still didn’t make it any more fun for me to watch – it was like watching someone walk out in front of a car and not being able to do anything about it.
It’s the sort of book that you can read in one sitting, or dip in and out of over a few days. Light but with some heavier undertones to give it a little more substance, but filled with brilliant humour, fantastic characters and a great heroine, I loved ‘Emailing Allie’ and will definitely come back to it again. For anyone after a bit of a lighter read, or fans of ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’, ‘Emailing Allie’ is a must read
Huge thanks to Cyder Press for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.
Emailing Allie is a fun chick lit told through a ‘diary’ of sorts – Allie’s inbox and sent mail tells a brilliant and funny tale of the last year of her life. The romances, the intrigues, and the many, many cups of tea.
I loved how the story is told through the emails that Allie sends and receives, it gave the whole book a real lift and made it a light fun read. It never got bogged down in too much detail, but when as a reader I wanted more detail, for example when Allie had been on a date, there was always just enough to satisfy. It’s a novel that very much relies on the reader’s imagination, and because I picked this up when I was having a bit of a reading slump it was really nice to breeze through a book that was on the whole light and not weighed down by too much detail and explanation. I also loved how we as the reader never actually see any of the key scenes, they are always told back through someone else’s eyes, and sometimes the details were unbearably slow to come out – details please! It felt like I was there, being copied in on all the emails and living vicariously through someone else’s gossip and I loved it.
You immediately get a sense of who Allie is, and whilst I felt a little bit strange and voyeuristic reading her emails, I quickly became so immersed in the story and just wanted to find out what happened, that I stopped noticing that it was someone’s personal emails.
I loved the humour, the lighter moments and the way that characters were constructed. A lot of the draw for me remains in the brevity and quick pace that the emails opened up.
It wasn’t all fluff and giggles though, I wasn’t expecting some of the darker and more emotional elements to creep in, but they did and added a certain weight to it that I actually really enjoyed and helped to balance everything out.
The one thing that I wasn’t as fussed on was the love triangle. It was quite stereotypical of the genre, and the rest of the book was such a fresh and entertaining concept I really wished that the romance could have been too. I also really struggle with the actions/attitude of one of the men in the triangle, but then I suppose that is always the way, people looking into a relationship can see how awful some people are being, whereas whilst you’re involved in it you don’t see it. So yes, I think it showed the relationship really realistically, but it still didn’t make it any more fun for me to watch – it was like watching someone walk out in front of a car and not being able to do anything about it.
It’s the sort of book that you can read in one sitting, or dip in and out of over a few days. Light but with some heavier undertones to give it a little more substance, but filled with brilliant humour, fantastic characters and a great heroine, I loved ‘Emailing Allie’ and will definitely come back to it again. For anyone after a bit of a lighter read, or fans of ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’, ‘Emailing Allie’ is a must read
October 27, 2012
When I was asked about whether or not I was interested in reading and reviewing Emailing Allie, I was immediately interested. I very much enjoy email-based novels and it reminded me pretty quickly of Holly’s Inbox, which was a brilliant book I read a while back. Emailing Allie is pretty much a new version of Holly’s Inbox, showing us the life of Allie Rainsbury, whose emails were discovered by her best friend Julie Lawson after Allie left the company. As far as I am aware, the novel is non-fiction – in that Allie Rainsbury, Julie Lawson, Scott Cooper and David Marshall are all apparently real people. But I’ll be honest and say I have my doubts. I think it’s the same sorta thing as Holly’s Inbox, where it’s billed as a real look at someone’s life, but actually it’s just an author who’s written it and it’s all purely fictional. But, who knows?
This isn’t going to be a very long review as it’s difficult to review a novel told entirely via email because you don’t really get to know the characters as well as a properly-written novel, y’know? To really know someone via email you’d have to write very long emails and it would sorta defeat the point. However, I quite liked Emailing Allie. It was a relatively quick read, but I found it very lacking in the humour of Holly’s Inbox. Allie was, despite her scatty nature, a very serious sort of person and as such, all of the email conversations she has with people are all very serious and lacking in warmth and humour.
The exchanges between Allie and Julie are great, probably the best in the book, and I did also enjoy those between Allie and Scott Cooper, but the majority of the novel focuses on Allie’s relationship with David Marshall and their exchanges are very bitty. They spent most of their time arguing over email and chucking accusations at each other and I just found it rather dull. It didn’t really read like a real relationship would. David went off at Allie (and vice versa) at the most stupid of things, and I just bored of it very quickly. I found David’s constant excuse making to be beyond the realms of believability too and I was with Julie when she said that if David really WAS interested, he would have made time rather than just cite work/tennis/squash as the reasons he couldn’t see her. It made me want to bash Allie’s head in. And if it really is a true story, then it just makes it worse because Allie was just so gullible and placid and apologetic for most of the exchanges with David (who by the way is an idiot!). Things like that sorta made me want to skip the pages a little bit. However, for the most part, I liked it. It wasn’t as good as Holly’s Inbox, but for those who liked Holly, will indeed enjoy Allie.
This isn’t going to be a very long review as it’s difficult to review a novel told entirely via email because you don’t really get to know the characters as well as a properly-written novel, y’know? To really know someone via email you’d have to write very long emails and it would sorta defeat the point. However, I quite liked Emailing Allie. It was a relatively quick read, but I found it very lacking in the humour of Holly’s Inbox. Allie was, despite her scatty nature, a very serious sort of person and as such, all of the email conversations she has with people are all very serious and lacking in warmth and humour.
The exchanges between Allie and Julie are great, probably the best in the book, and I did also enjoy those between Allie and Scott Cooper, but the majority of the novel focuses on Allie’s relationship with David Marshall and their exchanges are very bitty. They spent most of their time arguing over email and chucking accusations at each other and I just found it rather dull. It didn’t really read like a real relationship would. David went off at Allie (and vice versa) at the most stupid of things, and I just bored of it very quickly. I found David’s constant excuse making to be beyond the realms of believability too and I was with Julie when she said that if David really WAS interested, he would have made time rather than just cite work/tennis/squash as the reasons he couldn’t see her. It made me want to bash Allie’s head in. And if it really is a true story, then it just makes it worse because Allie was just so gullible and placid and apologetic for most of the exchanges with David (who by the way is an idiot!). Things like that sorta made me want to skip the pages a little bit. However, for the most part, I liked it. It wasn’t as good as Holly’s Inbox, but for those who liked Holly, will indeed enjoy Allie.
January 28, 2013
Emailing Allie by Julia Lawson
Definite chicklit with a very interesting format as the whole book is written as email exchanges between the characters during office hours. Thus if action happens at the weekends or evenings, the only way we hear about it from the emails and then one sided views of course. There is no other explanatory prose at all.
This is the first time I have read a book in this format and I found that once I got used to it, I really enjoyed it and you became surprisingly cognizant of who and what the characters were this way without any real physical descriptions.
The emails are somewhere between one or two lines and one page long and the story gradually emerges in the characters words ad their interchanges with various people that they work with or who use their work emails to contact them.
Slowly you fall into empathy with Allie and long for things to go right for her - but disaster seems to follow her simplest actions. I also found the phrasing amusing and often recognised myself or people I knew in the actions of the characters and giggled.. a feel good book for sure.
It is a 2012 publication and it is very ‘now’ in what happens to the characters and their feelings and feels very much of the moment. It reminds me of the type of emails I used to get when I was in a large office - and I always remember Friday afternoon pinging time - when the emails flew around asking who was going to the pub? who had what plans for the weekend? and so on… my work emails are far from as exciting now and we rarely share personal stuff in them. Maybe it is because we are now all very aware that emails are the stuff of legal nightmares and can never really be deleted…
Do I recommend you read it? Yes. Emphatically, especially if you are feeling a bit down and need a duvet day - this will not get you out of bed as you’ll stay there reading it, but at least you’ll enjoy your time there!
http://www.patientslikeme.com/javascr...
Definite chicklit with a very interesting format as the whole book is written as email exchanges between the characters during office hours. Thus if action happens at the weekends or evenings, the only way we hear about it from the emails and then one sided views of course. There is no other explanatory prose at all.
This is the first time I have read a book in this format and I found that once I got used to it, I really enjoyed it and you became surprisingly cognizant of who and what the characters were this way without any real physical descriptions.
The emails are somewhere between one or two lines and one page long and the story gradually emerges in the characters words ad their interchanges with various people that they work with or who use their work emails to contact them.
Slowly you fall into empathy with Allie and long for things to go right for her - but disaster seems to follow her simplest actions. I also found the phrasing amusing and often recognised myself or people I knew in the actions of the characters and giggled.. a feel good book for sure.
It is a 2012 publication and it is very ‘now’ in what happens to the characters and their feelings and feels very much of the moment. It reminds me of the type of emails I used to get when I was in a large office - and I always remember Friday afternoon pinging time - when the emails flew around asking who was going to the pub? who had what plans for the weekend? and so on… my work emails are far from as exciting now and we rarely share personal stuff in them. Maybe it is because we are now all very aware that emails are the stuff of legal nightmares and can never really be deleted…
Do I recommend you read it? Yes. Emphatically, especially if you are feeling a bit down and need a duvet day - this will not get you out of bed as you’ll stay there reading it, but at least you’ll enjoy your time there!
http://www.patientslikeme.com/javascr...
June 22, 2013
As a new year dawns, Allie needs various questions answered. Among the most urgent are: Where is her future leading? Why are relationships so complex and confusing? Can she get through a day without five cups of tea? Hilarious, touching and unique, Emailing Allie delves into the life and loves of 31-year-old Allie Rainsbury. Through emails sent to her best-friend Julie, the smooth-talking David Marshall and the enigmatic Scott Cooper (to mention but a few) we are taken on an frenetic, funny and uplifting journey that charts her daily challenges both inside and outside the office.
I bought this book as I enjoy email books, I loved Holly's Inbox and this reminded me of that. This is based on Allie, she has left the company and her emails are discovered. Although there are a lot of pages, it is quick to read.
I did not find it as funny as Holly's Inbox, which I did expect it was going to be, I did enjoy it though.
Unfortunately as it is a book based on purely emials it is hard to get to know the characters so opinions on them I'm afraid I don't have.
I would say I think it is worth reading, especially if you enjoy email books.
I bought this book as I enjoy email books, I loved Holly's Inbox and this reminded me of that. This is based on Allie, she has left the company and her emails are discovered. Although there are a lot of pages, it is quick to read.
I did not find it as funny as Holly's Inbox, which I did expect it was going to be, I did enjoy it though.
Unfortunately as it is a book based on purely emials it is hard to get to know the characters so opinions on them I'm afraid I don't have.
I would say I think it is worth reading, especially if you enjoy email books.
December 31, 2013
I was instantly drawn to this book; I've never read a book based entirely on emails, but I'd love to read more after reading Emailing Allie. It made me laugh out loud throughout the book, and although I was a little disappointed by the ending, I think that was mainly because I just wanted more! The office politics and "non-work" emails are truly hilarious and in many cases, so true. Even the work based emails tell an interesting story! Brilliant, I'd love to read more by this author!
January 28, 2013
Perfection
February 3, 2013
Predictable all's well that ends well ending. But it's a good laugh.
March 12, 2013
A fun read even if Allie did drive me crazy repeatedly! I would read a sequel if there is one =)
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews