Fangirl

Fangirl

by Rainbow Rowell 

Cath is a Simon Snow fan.

Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan.... But for Cath, being a fan is her life—and she's really good at it. She and her twin, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it's what got them through their mother leaving.

Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fanfiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.

Cath's sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can't let go. She doesn't want to.

Now that they're going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn't want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She's got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend; a fiction-writing professor who thinks fanfiction is the end of the civilized world; a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words...and she can't stop worrying about her dad, who's loving and fragile and has never really been alone.

For Cath, the question is: Can she do this? Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?

I love this book so much. It is hilarious. The writing wasn't anything uber extraordinary, but it was solid and funny and Rainbow Rowell did a really good job with the whole book. The plot was pretty good, not too predictable. It was fun to watch the characters grow. I'm not usually into the coming of age thing but Rowell does it well. 

The characters are brilliant, funny, relateable and lovable. I loved Cath, and Reagan, and Levi. Rowell used Cath's Writing Fiction class to express some of her beliefs about writing and teach writers every where things about writing that no one else will tell you. I loved the little ingrained messages and I think they were extremely valuable. I really related to Cath even though her personality was a bit extreme. She was sometimes flawed, but she was still lovable and real. Levi was absolutely amazing, yeah maybe he was a little too perfect, but I still loved him as a character and the part of humanity he represents, as well as what he brings out in the other characters. Reagan was brilliant. I loved her sharp and witty attitude that felt to me like a little bit veneer for some deeper issue. She was sassy and had some serious snark going but also had the perfect amount of sweetness buried inside. One of the only characters I really did not like was Wren. At first I liked her until she kind of completely disowned Cath for no reason at times and at others for just being a good sister. She kind of lost my respect then, but I think she was kind of supposed to be kind of a broken and immature character so that Rowell could delve deeper into the whole growing up thing and make the characters grow. I thought it was great that all of the love relationships weren't perfect, or instant, they got messed up and took a lot of work and still weren't perfect, or permanent necessarily, by the end of the book. They were pretty realistic. 

Over all I loved this book. So maybe it isn't going to be the next classic piece of literature, the great american novel that kids will have force-fed to them in schools for the next 50 years, but it is funny and brilliant and really fun to read. It's beautiful and you should go read it right now. Buy it from Liberty Bay Books by clicking here! I give it a solid four stars out of five, and a must read, especially for young authors, fangirls, sisters, young people, people who are nerds, people who are socially inept, introverts, book worms, teens, college students, people in general, you get my drift just go read it!

General consensus: