Fangirl
By Rainbow Rowell
Genre: YA Contemporary/Romance
Recommended For: Ages 15+, especially young women heading off to college who might be nervous about conquering new challenges away from home (and lovers of fan fiction)
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?
The Gist:
In my quest to read more YA books outside my favorite genre (fantasy), I picked up Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, and this book is yet another reason YA contemporary is quickly becoming a very close second for my favorite genre. It is a wonderful coming of age story told from freshman in college Cath’s point of view. Rowell uses incredible characters to draw you into the story of a young woman obsessed with the Harry Potter equivalent, Simon Snow. We get to see a more in depth look at the life of a fan fiction fanatic and writer which added an extra layer of reliability and intrigue to the story. Truly, Rowell’s strength is creating characters that are relatable, and this book is no different. A fun, enjoyable story where I think you can easily see yourself in.
What I Liked:
In my opinion, there are only a small handful of authors who can create truly relatable characters, and Rainbow Rowell is one of them. Cath reminds me of so many young women I know, including myself. Her struggle with anxiety is one I think a lot of girls can relate too. It’s not so overwhelming it’s debilitating, but it’s enough to make things a struggle that other people might find easy, like facing a cafeteria of strangers on your own. I could see a lot of myself in Cath, particularly her obsession with Simon Snow and fantasy worlds. I too turn to fantasy as a way to escape real life sometimes and imagine something bigger than myself. I almost find comfort in this, as does Cath. All these things added up to a character I felt reflected me, so obviously I became engrossed in the story because I had to find out what happened to this person who reminds me so much of me.
One of my favorite things about this story was that it centered around a college girl. I feel like there is an extreme under representation of stories starring college-aged men and women. And I think this is a sad gap because college is a very formative time in a young person’s life. So it thrilled me to watch how Cath handled the challenges of being on her own, away from the comfort of her childhood home and her twin sister. The situations Rowell put Cath in provided beautiful avenues for character growth. We saw Cath’s struggles to overcome her fear and anxiety. We saw her fail a lot in the beginning, but also witnessed her increasing bravery. It wasn’t too fast of a leap, but well paced and believable. The best part about this is more than it just making an attention gripping story, but it inspires the reader to believe that they can overcome fears too.
I almost hate to admit this to all of you, but I actually am not involved in the fan fiction world. Not because I don’t like it, but I haven’t been able to devote time to it. I always thought it sounded like such a fun world though, but didn’t know much about it. That’s why I was pleased to read about it in Fangirl. Now, since I am not a fan fiction writer/reader myself, I can’t attest to how realistic Rowell’s portrayal was. But I can say that it felt realistic to me. I felt like I was getting a true behind the scenes into the mind of a fan fiction obsessed girl, and it made me actually want to read some. So I guess mission accomplished Rowell. I loved how Cath’s fan fiction writing played into her troubles with her writing outside of fan fiction. How writing about Simon Snow and being so good at it became an obstacle for her when trying to write fiction that was completely made up on her own, not writing in an already created world. Rowell did an excellent job playing the two things off each other in a surprisingly way.
What I Didn’t Like:
I already know I’m against popular opinion in my first comment on what I didn’t like, especially given the last paragraph of what I did like. I loved that Cath wrote fan fiction. And I loved when she read it herself. What I didn’t like was feeling constantly interrupted at the beginning of chapters when it showed snipets of Cath’s fan fiction and the published Simon Snow books. My guess is that Rowell wanted to make Simon Snow feel like a side character in the story because he was such an important part of Cath’s life. And if that’s true, in her defense, I think she achieved that. My only beef with it was that I wanted to know more about Cath, and hearing Simon Snow’s story so much took away from that and disrupted Cath’s story for me.
Also, above I said I loved how Rowell used the fan fiction to play up Cath’s fears of writing her own purely original stories. And this is true, however I thought the resolution in the end was rushed. I didn’t see enough character development in that area for my own personal preferences, and for me, that was a major part of the story.
LunasLuckyRating: 4/5 Lunas
