Reviews with content warning for Medical content - Fangirl

Reviews tagging 'Medical content'

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

11 reviews

katialena's review against another edition

emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

A good fluffy read if you want to explore how the character experiences their first year of university and how they navigate the new and changing dynamics in their life.

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chaos_and_chapters's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted relaxing slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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vlmollylv's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted fast-paced

Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

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anne_shouseofdreams's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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elliereadsthings's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful lighthearted reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

My first book of 2023 — check!

I was lucky enough to go into this book with a neutral opinion. Initially, the idea of a book based around fandom was extremely enticing as someone who does 95% of her reading on sites like AO3. However, reading a lot of the top reviews and seeing such a strong divide between readers, I lowered my expectations for Fangirl by quite a lot, and I’m glad I did.

The book wasn’t inherently bad, per se, and I can see why a lot of you liked it. The pacing was good overall and the characters were, for the most part, easy to empathize with. But, lowering my expectations allowed me to finish the book much easier than I otherwise would've.

————————————

Cath, the main character of the book, is by far my least favorite - and yet the most like me. (~~I wonder what that says about how I view myself…~~) A mentally ill father, mommy issues, and a sister who says none of it hurt her? Check, check, and check. I just find Cath to be a bit too… I’m not sure what the right word is… Sure, Cath is a very flawed individual, but she tends to be depicted as ‘unique’, both in thought and appearance, more so than not. Her eyes are depicted as being blue, brown, gray, and green — all in the same paragraph. On her first day in her college town she notes that it’s creepy that everyone there is all around her age. I wonder what she expected from a college town, honestly. Cath also suggests, a bit later in the book, that their mother is selfish and desecrated a national tragedy with her own issues, after she walked out on them on September 11th (“The September 11th”). Like I said, I have more than my fair share of mommy issues, but suggesting their mother intentionally left on 9/11 is a bit far.

Other than Cath, we have a bit of my least favorite trope: “pretty girl takes her glasses off and is deemed more pretty”. Levi, the love interest, asks Cath to warn him if she plans to take off her glasses after seeing her twin sister, Wren. Later, he asks her to take off her glasses, and, after she asks if he likes her glasses, goes on to say, “I love your glasses. I especially love the moment when you take them off.”

There are also quite a few references, anywhere from Soylent Green to Zack and Cody. Many of which I had to end up Googling to understand. Not necessarily a dealbreaker, but something to know before you go into it.

Oh, and CW: Kanye reference. Yeah… that didn’t age well…

To its defense, however, I don’t believe Fangirl was wrongly represented. (Though, I wasn’t in the book world when it was being advertised, so maybe I’m wrong!) Sure, we don’t get a lot of fandom in here, but we do get what the title suggests; a fangirl. A relatable one at that; one who almost fails a class, TWICE, because of her dedication to her fanfiction. Who gets snarky when someone’s only watched the movies. Who gets hurt when the series she loves is talked down upon.

Like I said, many of the characters are extremely likable (I’m joining the Reagan lovers, she’s the best), including Cath (after the first couple chapters that is). It is not hard to empathize with these characters at all. There are scenes where Wren and Cath disagree about their mom, and I easily flip back and forth between agreeing/empathizing with each.

(On the topic of which, I’m glad that Cath was allowed to never let her mom in. I’m glad that even though family is clearly very important to her, it doesn’t mean she had to cave.)

Overall, Fangirl does what it set out to do, and I don’t regret the read. I wish the book had a stronger start, but I liked following along on the ride!

OH! And don’t get me started on Cath… Wren…

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

“I could hear you. In some of the best parts.”

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ashleycmms's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional lighthearted tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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bedtimesandbooks's review against another edition

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hopeful slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

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breadbees's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful lighthearted reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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jazzy_t's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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

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tkatt20's review against another edition

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lighthearted slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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.

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