Book Review | Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Format: Kindle

Source: Purchased

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Publication Date: September 10, 2013

Pages: 433

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From the author of the New York Times bestseller Eleanor & Park.

A coming-of-age tale of fan fiction, family and first love.

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 sister, 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 fan fiction, 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 fan fiction 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? Writing her own stories?

And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?

 

 

 

I have heard such amazing things about Rainbow Rowell so when I saw this book on sale on Kindle, I immediately bought it so that I could see if this author was as amazing as everyone said she was. While, I can say that I truly enjoyed this book and I will definitely read more by this author, I have to say that it wasn’t the AMAZING book that I was expecting based on everything that I heard.

Cather and Wren are twins in their first year of college and they seem to be the exact opposite of each other. Wren is the party girl who you rarely catch home and Cather ‘Cath’ is the quiet one who would rather stay in her room and write Simon Snow fan fiction.

Cath and Wren’s mom left them when they were young and now that they are in college it seems like Wren is pulling away from Cath too. Cath was really easy to like but I felt like she could be a little naive and immature at times. I didn’t like Wren at all during most of the book, she was constantly drunk and she was a bitch to Cath a lot, during the last third of the book I did start liking her a little more.

I went back and forth with the love interest a few times (I don’t want to say who it is because at the beginning of the book there are two different guys that it could be and I don’t want to give anything away). But I will say that at first I liked him, then I hated him, then I kind of liked him again. Thankfully, by the end of the book I did like him but I still don’t agree with what he done that made me hate him….that probably don’t make sense, oh well…

Overall, Fangirl is fast and fun read. I really liked the creativity behind how Cath and Wren got their names, I never would have pieced it together. If you like your books with twins, some fan fiction and a sarcastic roommate then this is the book for you.