I guess this should go without saying by now that I AM A HUGE FAN OF RAINBOW ROWELL and any “review” I post of hers is probably going to be a raving, embarrassing, and sloppy mess.
Although Justine had already read Fangirl and it inspired her to add the Fangirl design to our shop, this past summer was the first time my reading list lightened enough to let me start it. Here’s the synopsis from its Goodreads page:
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?
So this is a little-known fact about me but I used to be deep in the world of Buffy fanfiction. I used to, like, enter competitions and write slash and all of that. So all of the Simon Snow (a copyright-friendly allusion to Harry Potter, at least in my opinion) stuff and fanfiction lingo was totally familiar to me, but I could see how it could throw off a newbie.
Okay, see I’ve held it in for awhile now and this is where I start to get really weird about Rainbow Rowell. SHE IS JUST SUCH A GOOD WRITER. SHE HAS IT. SHE GETS IT AT ALL. CAN I PICK YOUR BRAIN, RAINBOW? CAN I BE YOUR FRIEND, ONLY THE KIND THAT JUST LISTENS AND BASKS IN YOUR WISDOM IN THE NOT-CREEPY WAY, YOU KNOW?
Just like how Eleanor & Park GOT high school and the complexity of those relationships, Fangirl gets post-high school and early college and the MEGA complexities of those experiences. Choosing to set the stage with a set of twins who are figuring out how different they actually are and you have a recipe for a story that is poignant, funny, and oh-so-relatable.
Here is some great fanart I found that showcase the fantastic writing Rainbow offers:
Guys, the entire novel is worth its epilogue. You CAN’T read it on its own because you’d miss the entire meaning behind it but it moved me so much, so greatly. This is one of those reviews that ends with me shamelessly BEGGING you to read it. So, please?
