Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Publisher: St. Martin's PressPublication Date: September 10th 2013
Pages: 448
Source: ALA
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
Goodreads

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?

Let's just say I started to fangirl as soon as I got a copy of this book. Seriously. I loved Eleanor and Park with all may heart, and I was ready to see what else Rowell could concoct. Fangirl is a book about nerd culture, college, love, writing, and self-discovery. This is a much different story than Rowell's first book, but I was not disappointed.

The main character Cath, is a quite the difficult character to like at first, as wells as at some points throughout the story. She is pretty much a typical awkward, stuck-behind-your-computer type of nerdy girl (like some of us) and she has a lot of trouble getting out there. She starts to open up when her roommate and Cath's twin sister Wren start pulling her out into the world and she beings to open up more as a character.

Wren was also a difficult character to figure out at times. She was still a very nerdy character but she was on the opposite end of the spectrum as Cath socially, and she was often a crazy drunk. I started to finally like her in the end when she isn't drinking and pushing Cath away anymore.

Two other major character, Reagan and Levi we two characters that helped Cath pop out of her socially-awkward bubble and get into the real world. Sometimes it was hard to tell why they liked her so much but in the end they worked really well together so it didn't matter.

College settings always seem to be really fresh and fun to dive into, and this one was no exception. This story takes place almost exclusively on a college campus. The setting was fun and fresh and made the book a bit easier to get into.

In general the story was really good. It's pretty much a straight out self-discovery story with romance and some bumps in the road with a few quirks, and I liked that about it. Rowell's work is very addicting, so I'll pretty much read anything she writes.

The ending was not as tied down as I would have liked. There were several things in the story that needed resolution and several of them did get a good ending, but there were a few things I wish had been explained a little more.