Book Review - The Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

This was taken from my Wordpress account. 

Okay first things first, I do not know how to do a proper Book Review… Alright?

So here it goes.

Blurb of The Fangirl

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?

My Review

This book is about Cath Avery, a Simon Snow fan, a fanfiction writer and a total first-class nerd.

As the blurb states, she is a hardcore fan of Simon Snow from her childhood, she and her twin sister, Wren. Unlike most stories, our female lead is not exactly the most attractive one, in fact one the most said attractive character would be her twin, Wren (An independent, reckless girl with style).

Cath dislikes reality as it is, and like many other fangirls or nerd, she prefers to be in a different world, preferably Simon Snow’s. She is the writer of Carry On, a fanfic about Simon and Baz (as gay lovers). Her fanfic is an incredible hit on Fanfixx. She had been working on it for two years, and had attracted many readers who followed her story till the very end. It is noted that Cath is a great writer, especially when the genre is romance.

She is a diligent and a very determined writer, her twin sister, Wren was also a writer, just like her, but stopped due to her own reasons (she simply has grown out of it).

Cath doesn’t want to be in college, 
She doesn’t want to stop writing fanfiction 
and 
She simply doesn’t want to live in this world where unfortunately she exists. 

She took a course called fiction-writing which was lead by a Professor Piper who is a real author (in that world). Her professor approves of her work, until one day, Cath decided to submit her fanfic (Simon Snow) as a project. Professor Piper insists that it is plagiarism and it isn’t Cath’s original work despite the fact she indeed has plotted and written it on her own. She insists that Cath should redo her project, giving her a second chance. However, Cath was troubled with other matters.

This story is how Cath deals with her problems when she entered college, how she made friends with a nonchalant Reagan, how she get to know Levi (the ever charming prince), how she deals with her sister’s change of attitude towards her, her ever manic dad and of course, college itself. 

She is not such a strong female lead in the story, even though the story revolves around her. Nevertheless, the book is realistic enough to show how girls (in general/nerds/low self-esteem) think. It is real and you can relate to Cath easily.

The Fangirl is honestly a good interpretation of college life as well as a great manifestation of a first-class geek. You can feel the emotions felt by Cath when she encountered her mother, who left her when she was 8. Moreover, you could sense the development of attachments between each character…

In this story, all the characters were given different degree of highlights but yet, it managed to include every one of them in the whole picture.

I would say more, but yeah, I suck at reviews! I tried

I’ll probably revise and update this later on but for now, let’s leave it as it is