It was super cute and relatable and an easy read.

This book was a little better than the last one I read. I do like how it placed a lot of emphasis on how an author may finish a book but it lives on in the mind of the reader. I probably wouldn't recommend it, but it wasn't too bad

Though it bothered me that the main character was depicted as, well, basically exactly what people think fanfic writers are (socially stunted outcasts whose mental problems keep them writing instead of ~going outside~, Levi was really loveable and understanding and in the end really saved the book for me to where I like it fine.

It struck me as really sweet while being somewhat of a fandom time capsule; gone are the days of 'SIMON SNOW IS SACRED' and the Snapewives, but as someone who looks back fondly on Fandom Wank and all the Drama that craziness was back then, it made me oddly reflective about how pride in fandom is now about who does the best art, who has the most popular friends while trying to simultaneously be a fan of something ironically.

Official Rating: 5

Note: This is a review that I wrote a couple of years ago, literally minutes after finishing Fangirl. As you can probably tell by the length (good lord Eloise, what were you thinking), I was a bit excited. Spoilers ahoy!

Thoughts:
Normally, I wouldn’t be making such a drama over a book. Actually, that’s a lie – I often do. But I don’t think I’ve ever made a fuss over a book quite like Fangirl before.
Rainbow Rowell’s romantic comedy is a sort of coming-of-age unlike any other I have ever read. A heroine with choices to make about a future that kind of scares her, a romantic interest who I’ve never read about before (you’ll see what I mean), and a family that has so many problems, it’s a short-fall of The Simpsons.
Except, it’s not a particularly dramatic story. In fact, it hasn’t got much of a plot at all.

Yet, I find myself desperate for others to read it, even just so that I have someone to talk to about it – and my sudden, burning desire to read Harry Potter.
Fangirl’s beauty comes in its simplicity. This isn’t a story of violent hardships and matters of life-and-death – it’s a story about a socially-anxious girl at the butt-end of her teen years that can’t stop thinking about a fictitious universe and her OTP. So, in other words, it’s a story that’s a little bit about me, a little bit about my friends, a little bit about my family, and a little bit about everyone else I know.
Initially, I found myself intrigued by the thought that a book had been written about fanfiction. Surely that would only end in disaster! But as I read through it, I found myself involved in the lives of these characters in ways that I had never been before. I cared about them, about what happened to them, and I was no longer reading Fangirl for the reasons I had read so many other books.

It wasn’t for the cheesy romance, for the long-winded descriptions of eyes and faces and mouths. It was for the discussions that the characters had, for the pushing of boundaries as Cath found her own and then respectively came into it.
Before anyone gets put off by the lack-of-plot, I should clarify that although it would be pretty difficult to put down into three-sentences the general plot of this book, the main focus of the book wasn’t the plot. This was a book that was all about the characters, as strange as that sounds. I’m sure it sounds just as strange to anyone who reads it as it felt to type. Because, of course it’s about the characters – what book isn’t? But Fangirl isn’t a novel where things happen to the characters and they react according to personalities that the author set for them, it’s a novel where the characters are reacting to each other, and their personalities flourish and reveal themselves to the readers in due course. It’s just as much about Cath’s journey as it is about Wren’s, or Levi’s, or Reagan’s.

And seeing Cath go from the girl who practically starved herself so that she wouldn’t have to eat in her university’s cafeteria to the girl who was laughing with her somewhat-terrifying roommate about all her fellow freshmen that they’d people-watched together over the course of the year warmed my heart in a way that no character has ever been able to.

The writing of Fangirl seemed to flow in a carefree way that I’ve found is often missing from books that try to discuss social anxiety and the pressures of university to step outside your own bubble. I found myself running my hand through my hair when Levi did, fixing my glasses when Cath did, sitting a little straighter when Reagan was present because gosh darn it, I could feel her judgement emanating off the page. The characters were real, and they were different. In particular, Rowell had bitten the forbidden fruit in a work of fiction – Twins. So tempting, and yet so dangerous when done incorrectly. Of course, I can’t exactly speak from experience, as I don’t have a twin and I’ve never written about a set of twins, but I have observed in writing when an author is so keen to point out the Twin-thing that I feel like I’m reading a conversation between mirrors. Characters so apparently eager to be the same that all you have is a hollow reflection of the possibility of a character who was never really there in the first place. Yet, Cath and Wren weren’t mirrors – try as Cath might. They were different people, with different tastes, voices, patterns – but they were similar enough that I didn’t have to struggle to imagine their sibling relationship.

But I digress.

Without stepping on any toes, I can pretty confidently say one thing: Cath was me. She was my generation. In her, I saw things that I’m fairly confident everyone that I know could relate to. At the same time, though, she wasn’t so broad that her character was as flat as a piece of cardboard. Now, I’m hardly socially awkward, but I quite often feel a burning desire to avoid people at all costs. Not any specific person – just people. I can understand the desire to curl up on my bed rather than have to go and eat in a public situation, and the comfort in being alone for long periods of time.

That was another big theme in the book – solitude. First-chapters-Cath had only so much room in her heart. Enough for Wren, enough for her Dad (who’s name really should have been mentioned earlier in the book. I spent way too long thinking that ‘Art’ was Wren’s mysterious Mexican boyfriend. Ew.), and, of course, enough for Baz and Simon. With the absence of all but the latter two parties from her life at university, Cath found herself spending an inordinate amount of time alone in the first part of the book. And the best part about it? She liked it. I don’t think I’ve ever read about a character that doesn’t mind spending lots of time on their own – craves it, even. And that, my friends, is what I call relatable. I find myself spending mass amounts of time on my own, and I know that many other people do, too. What others don’t realise, though, is that this doesn’t mean that we’re lonely, or crave company; it can just mean that we like lots of quality time with our computers, internet connections and books. Reading that Cath shared this desire for solitude was like a balm to my soul. Finally, a character that understands that it’s okay to be alone in a room without another character to bounce witty banter off with – an author who can work with seclusion and still show development.

I’ll skim over the other characters – otherwise I’ll be here all night.
I loved Levi’s receding hairline. Stick with me, here. Rowell crafted a romantic interest that actually managed to maintain the romantic part without losing the interest part. Sorry, YA writers, but I’m a bit sick of reading about brooding young men with chiselled abs and expensive vehicles. Levi, oh Levi, my love. A skinny, too-tall, too-smiley, not-too-pale, not-perfect boy with quite possibly the biggest flaw for a fictional character in a fiction book – a reading difficulty. His perfections were his imperfections, and vice versa. Levi wasn’t the dream-boat that Cath crafted in her fanfiction. And, ironically, his inability to read was the thing that truly made them perfect for each other. He was the perfect gentleman, and though he might not have many exact counterparts in real-life, when I read about him and imagined him, I pictured the faces of some of my friends and I saw their smiles in every single one of Levi’s.

Reagan was scary, in the best-friend way that makes the scariness comforting. When I picture her and Cath in the same room, I can’t help but picture a lioness standing protectively over her cub that’s finally beginning to growl.
Nick started as that guy – a guy to distract me from the inevitability of Cath and Levi’s getting together. Pretty soon he annoyed me, and eventually, as I’m sure Rowell intended, I couldn’t help but feel a foreboding pressure in my mind whenever we was on-screen, so to speak. I laughed out loud when Reagan first met Nick, and addressed his presence by kicking him out of her and Cath’s room and asking our protagonist: “Is this yours?” (p428) I didn’t even feel bad for him – subversive copyright will have justice!
Which brings me to the Avery family.

Wren – what a perfect sister. Well, no actually, considering her drinking-problem and arguably unjustified resentment towards her twin for the majority of the book. Art – what a totally not-perfect Dad. (Seriously, Rowell needed to mention his name sooner. If it was in the earlier stages of the book, I must have missed it.) To a certain extent, Laura – I’ve never wanted to slap a Mum so hard – not even the infamous Mrs Bennet. Maybe I could invent a game.
Which brings me to the final thing I wanted to discuss about this book. The writing. Not Rowell’s writing – Cath’s. Although, I suppose it was still technically Rowell’s writing. Details, and all that.
Fangirl, for me, was the first of its kind in that it was the first book I’ve ever read where one of the main themes in it was literature. Or in this case, fanfiction. This was more of a personal thing, though, rather than an overall fascinating side of the book.

I’ve written fanfiction. Once I’m in Uni myself, I’ll probably write it again. I understand the thrill of using other people’s characters – in many ways, it’s just as thrilling as acting. Taking on a role as such, using words that are almost adopted, but not quite. Creating situations that could never happen, and finding out how your favourite characters would react in them. It’s an addiction.
Seeing that addiction in someone else, fictional or not, was refreshing. It was cleansing, if you will, to read things that I myself have felt put down into words for me. Maybe it was just me, but it helped me not only understand Cath better, but understand myself better.

More than just the fanfiction, though, it was Cath’s passion for writing itself that inspired me. Whilst reading Fangirl, I more than once wanted to put the book down, pick up a pen and let my own mind run wild alongside Rowell’s phrasing and dialect. I’m not usually one to quote a fiction book, especially twice in one review, but never in my history as a reader have I read a more truthful description of writing than one that Cath gives her frantic working on her final, long-awaited Fiction-Writing project:
“Sometimes writing is running downhill, your fingers jerking behind you on the keyboard the way your legs do when they can’t quite keep up with gravity.” (p452)
Wow. Just… wow. Yes.

I can’t count the number of times that I have been frantically typing at a keyboard, or writing on a notepad, frustrated that I physically can’t make my hands move fast enough to keep up with my brain, and in my haste I might lose the end of a particularly poetic sentence – precious words which are lost to the physical constraints of the lack of a fast-forward button.

This moment was, in my opinion, the true climax of Cath’s psychological journey. This was her finally learning to put the past behind her and adapt to the new aspects of her life that University had forced onto her. Closing the final page, as such. And it was obvious that this was exactly what Cath needed to come to terms with her mother’s abandonment of her. That she was finally able to put what she felt growing up as an effective guardian to her father and twin into words, and then turn those words into what she feared most: fiction, was the final hurdle in her development. Of course there was more development for her beyond the realms of Fangirl. However, the Cath that cried into her boyfriend’s bed, huddled under the covers with the windows open was leaps and bounds from the girl who cried because her sister wouldn’t share a room with her.

More than anything, Cath’s journey was believable. All through the 460 pages of this novel, I felt many things towards Cath. Pity, resentment, frustration, empathy, pain, respect. As I read her finally write that God-forsaken story, though, I felt honoured. Honoured to have been one of the thousands of people to have witnessed the development of a girl who just that little bit too much like myself and my friends for comfort.

There were lots of quotations like the one above – quotations that made me stop, put down the book and just breathe because I was reading about Cath’s life, and yet when I looked at the page I held so delicately in my death-grip, I felt like Rowell had taken my own thoughts, feelings, emotions, desires, inhibitions, fears and dreams, and had laid them out for me to discover in the confines of her novel – along with the rest of the world.

So, yea. I liked Fangirl.

I loved it.

With its Gen-Z references, some specific to the general Fandom internet-culture, it might not be every reader’s cup of tea, but Fangirl is a book that needs to be read by any person who is a lover of language. Of words.
It sure as hell sucked mine right out of me.

2.75⭐️

I don't really have a review for this book. It was good. It was a little bit cheesy, a little bit relatable, a little bit sad and a little bit happy. It was just good. I finished it easily, I read it for long stretches of time without wanting to put it down... but I didn't LOVE it. It easily gets 4 stars because it did keep me interested, but it was just (just) good. I wanted more resolution (or maybe character development?) for each of the characters.... The real characters, not the fan fiction characters. The only character I feel like we got a real, good, resolution with was Nick. Either way, the book was good, and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for an easy summer read.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

#rainbow #rowell #cath #wren #levi #fangirl #mint #green #easter #reading #book #books #read #girlsthatread #goodreads #goodreadschallenge #cover #simonbaz

Twin sisters Cath and Wren are starting university and although they've been joined at the hip all their lives, growing up sometimes means shooting off in opposite directions. Wren is a party-girl extrovert while Cath, our narrator, is an authorial introvert with a fandom obsession.

I loved the inclusion of Cath's fanfic writing alongside "excerpts" from the canon tales of fictional children's fantasy author Gemma T. Leslie's Simon Snow series. (A thinly veiled Harry Potter type fandom.) Cath's dilemmas, quirks, and fears really resonated for me. Although this was by no means a sad, melancholy or upsetting story, I often found myself in self-reflective tears over Cath's musings. (These were often followed directly by chuckles; Rowell's humour is paced excellently.)

I feel like if I handed this book to someone who doesn't know me that well and said, "please read this: I think it will explain me to you," that they'd have a pretty good grasp of me by the end of the novel. I've never felt that about a book before. An excellent read! Thank you for that, Ms. Rowell!

Super cute. Loved that Cath and Wren were twins because, I have a twin. I loved just about every aspect of this book. Really cute. Rainbow Rowell is an amazing author..read this book.