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A review by chadstatton
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
3.0
Admittedly, young adult fiction is not the type of thing I usually read. I have read and enjoyed some post apocalyptic young adult fiction like Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games trilogy, James Dashner’s Maze Runner series and even Veronic Roth’s Divergent series. So I’m not opposed to young adult books. My bent is more toward the science fiction elements of the these stories and not so much the romance. I know that Rainbow Rowell is not that sort of young adult author and Eleanor and Park is not the kind of book that I would ever spend precious reading time on but I did hear here speak in an interview about this book and it seemed like an interesting premise so I gave it a shot.
Cath Avery is a freshmen at the University of Omaha, Lincoln and she is really there because that’s where her identical twin sister wanted to go. Cath is a book nerd that feels more at home with the characters in a fictional world about a boy wizard, (that bears an intentional resemblance to a certain fictional boy wizard of whom we are all acquainted), than she does with the characters that she meets at school. Ms. Rowell does create mostly believable characters here, Reagan - Cath’s complete opposite roommate who feels pity, then a fondness for Cath and ultimately becomes a good friend. Levi - Reagan’s ex boyfriend and smiling bobblehead. Wren Cath’s twin sister and onetime partner in fanfiction who now wants nothing to do with her.
I thought that the book was going to be about a fangirl and what these fictional worlds mean to people and about the communities that fans build. It started out that way for about the first chapter and then it became a coming of age story that’s been done so many times that the by the end the only thing original was the excerpts from the fictional world of Simon Snow. Even that got pretty tedious at the end. I wanted to read a book about fandom and that’s not what this is at all. It’s a good story for what it is and I think the characters are mostly believable as well as the dialogue. I did get really sick of one particular character telling that special someone that he really, really, really liked her. These are college kids, not middle schoolers.
Cath Avery is a freshmen at the University of Omaha, Lincoln and she is really there because that’s where her identical twin sister wanted to go. Cath is a book nerd that feels more at home with the characters in a fictional world about a boy wizard, (that bears an intentional resemblance to a certain fictional boy wizard of whom we are all acquainted), than she does with the characters that she meets at school. Ms. Rowell does create mostly believable characters here, Reagan - Cath’s complete opposite roommate who feels pity, then a fondness for Cath and ultimately becomes a good friend. Levi - Reagan’s ex boyfriend and smiling bobblehead. Wren Cath’s twin sister and onetime partner in fanfiction who now wants nothing to do with her.
I thought that the book was going to be about a fangirl and what these fictional worlds mean to people and about the communities that fans build. It started out that way for about the first chapter and then it became a coming of age story that’s been done so many times that the by the end the only thing original was the excerpts from the fictional world of Simon Snow. Even that got pretty tedious at the end. I wanted to read a book about fandom and that’s not what this is at all. It’s a good story for what it is and I think the characters are mostly believable as well as the dialogue. I did get really sick of one particular character telling that special someone that he really, really, really liked her. These are college kids, not middle schoolers.