I have re-read this books hundreds of times! Amazingly well written. Will always be a happy read for me!

This review includes some mild spoilers

After reading a lot of fantasy lately, I wanted a slow-paced contemporary to change things up a bit, but that’s pretty much all this was. I didn’t like the characters, the plot was non existent, and I felt like nothing was resolved in the end. It was unsatisfactory and I feel like I wasted my time.

This book starts with the main character starting college with her twin sister. It’s no surprise that there’s immediate problems when she meets her roommate Raegen, who is older and makes fun of the MC for her interest in the popular book series Simon Snow. The author included excerpts from the Simon Snow series and some fanfiction before the start of each chapter which I did like since it was a bit of a tempo change. The MC is very obviously a huge fan and she’s the author of some very popular fanfiction within the fandom. Right off the bat I didn’t see too many problems, it seemed to start okay and the MC was relatable, but I could not get past her name; Cather. If they had called her Cat I wouldn’t have minded, but Cath was just to hard for me to say/understand and Cather makes me think of medical equipment and I just don’t like it. I can usually get past names I don’t like , but Cath had some very questionable morals. There is some extremely questionable dialogue a few chapters in between Cath and Raegen and I felt gross just reading it. Cath is extremely judgmental and rude and has a very strange obsession with eyebrows and hairlines like that’s all that matters on a person, you could actually play a really good drinking game with how much she mentions eyebrows. Cath also describes Raegen as a heavier person, but also seems surprised at how confident she is, like a heavier person can’t be confident. The whole thing just left a bad taste in my mouth. 

I am honestly not sure if there’s many characters I actually liked in this book. Wren plays a big part for fairly obvious reasons, but she treats everyone horribly. She comes across as stuck up and spoiled with zero empathy for anyone else, and especially not Cath. She is almost never held accountable for her actions until the end, and even then she fights with everyone and it’s extremely immature for someone in college. You meet the main love interest Levi early on in the book as well. Levi is one of the few characters I did like, but he didn’t have much dimension. He just felt like the stereotypical hot "golden retriever" boyfriend that is insanely nice to everyone and somehow falls for Cath even though she’s extremely rude and unpleasant to be around. I honestly don’t know if Cath even thought he was attractive with how much she nit picked his appearance. The guy deserved better. 

This book did an exceptionally good job of dancing around important topics like mental health and learning disabilities. It is fairly rare finding a YA book that includes these topics but it isn’t the main focus so I was excited about that but then they just don’t deal with them at all. The issues come up but the characters just find loopholes or flat out refuse to deal with their problems and I feel that just encourages bad habits for the readers. I also feel like this book didn’t do a great job portraying fan culture, it pretty much just talked about how you’re judged if you’re a big fan of a popular series, which I’m sure many readers can relate to that, I just wish it could have included Cath actually being proud of who she is and what she enjoys. By the end of the story it felt like absolutely nothing was accomplished. There was almost no character development aside from Cath actually standing up for herself at the end. It felt like it ended the same way it started, and any of the big conflicts that happened just didn’t have a very satisfying ending.

The only reason I didn’t rate it lower was that I did manage to finish it and it wasn’t an all around unpleasant read. The middle of the book was not that bad and I did end up finding Cath to be somewhat relatable and I enjoyed the few good role models she had, but I can not see myself reading this book again. I probably wouldn’t recommend this book unless you wanted a simple coming of age story with an okay romance since that’s really all there is going on here.

I devoured this book in, like, a day.

Cath just hits. It's easy to relate to her; to borrow Rowell's words, she "jumps off the page." But the even more astounding part of the book is that Rowell manages to put words to experiences that are rarely talked about and that rarely get representation -- fic authors moving into original fiction, anxious first year college students who don't party, children of adults with mental illness. I found Cath to be intensely relatable, and Rowell's depiction to be very truthful. Rowell's tone is free and easy; she writes as though she has lived experience in this world. While Rowell admits to being a fic author early, I don't know enough about her personal life to guess about the rest. What I can say is that I felt a lot of me reflected in Cath that I don't see in a lot of stories, and I didn't know I needed to hear.  

I'll admit I didn't originally love Levi as a love interest at the beginning of the book; I found him too forceful. But as Cath gained her own confidence, he grew on me. They developed their banter and their language. I'm not sure the romance would have cemented if it wasn't a slow burn, if Cath didn't have time to grow before she and Levi got together. I think where Rowell succeeded here is in thinking ahead; she didn't give Cath a love interest appropriate for her beginning. She gave Cath a love interest appropriate for when she was ready, and I think that's super powerful. And Rowell's handling of the love triangle, normally a tired trope, was absolutely masterful. 

Fic authors, put down the fic for a bit and read this book. You won't regret it.