(4 stars)
Published: September 10th 2013
Synopsis: 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. 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?
“Sometimes writing is running downhill, your fingers jerking behind you on the keyboard the way your legs do when they can’t quite keep up with gravity.”
I had heard so much about Fangirl before I finally managed to get my hands on it.
It seemed like it was advertised all over every social network, with people raving about Cath and Levi. So, finally, despite not being the biggest fan in the world of contemporary YA (although, done right, I do love it) I finally ordered Fangirl. I mean, judging from the blurb it seemed as though it would be exactly my kind of thing. I've long been involved in fandoms and have read my fair share of fanfics, as well as being a huge fan of a few on-going novel length fanfics (James and Lily, mostly.) In addition to that, my sister has bugged me for years to start my own full length fanfic and I've always put it off. Plus I'm at college/university age so basically, it's as if this book was destined to find me right now.
Considering all of that, I was pretty surprised when at first I didn't really warm to the book straight away. For the first half, I think I was too harsh on Cath. Don't get me wrong, by the end of the book I was definitely more understanding of her, and feeling a bit guilty for being frustrated with her. We're so different that it took a while for me to see our similarities. I was annoyed with her for doing things that I do myself, regularly. I think that's when I realised that I'm far too used to reading about more 'perfect' heroines. Heroines who, despite being awkward, always have the perfect come back to any sarcastic comment thrown at them. Heroines who proclaim their own crippling insecurities, only to suddenly get caught up in a heated kissed with a near-stranger in the next chapter. (Not that any of that is 'wrong', it just comes up a lot in YA lit.)
I think I expected Fangirl to be a coming-into-your-own kind of book, when in reality I can't really commit to calling it that. Cath does go through a lot changes, as anyone does in the first year of being away from home, but for me that was not the point of Fangirl. Cath didn't need to change to fit in or find a guy or salvage her relationship with her family, because those things happened anyway.
What I'm trying to say, before this gets crazily confusing, is that Fangirl is about a normal girl remaining a normal girl but gaining many great things along the way. Once I realised that Cath doesn't have to be likeable all the time, I ended up really liking her. Which is weird, I know.
Moving on, the cast of characters is brilliant, each of them bringing something different to the story. Levi is far from being presented as the perfect guy. He messes up and says the wrong thing, but I liked that he could own up to it and try to make things right. Reagan basically tells Cath what the reader wants to tell her, and their friendship ended up being one of my favourite aspects of the book.
I might be in a minority or maybe not, I didn't really read any of the Simon Snow fanfic in the book properly. I wasn't all that interested in it and I felt like if it wasn't in the book, there would be no real loss from it. Just my opinion even if I do understand why it was put in there in the first place. I did enjoy some of it, but some parts were a little long-winded and I preferred Cath talking about the fanfic rather than actually reading it.
The differences between Cath and Wren were really interesting. I liked how Rowell didn't have sudden quick fixes for every single problem, and not everything could be one hundred percent resolved. That's not how real life works, and it was well presented in Fangirl. Family is never completely clear, you can't shove everything into neat little boxes when so much history is shared between people.
I liked the light romance, it was cute and, in the end, realistic. The more the book progressed, the more I came to really like Levi, which was nice because most of the time I make up my mind pretty quickly about love interests. He kept me guessing and, like Cath, I was never quite sure when to start trusting him. In the end, it was a sweet slow-burner which was very different from other contemporaries I've read lately.
So 4 stars because I think this book will be great for people who really identify with Cath, but I wasn't completely there with it. However, I really enjoyed the characters and the fact that I couldn't stop grinning through most of the scenes in the last third of the book. So for all the fangirl (or boy) types out there, I can definitely recommend Fangirl. For non-fandom people, I'm not sure what their feelings on it would be, but I'd give it a go anyway because Rowell's writing is very addictive.
Have you read Fangirl? What did you think about it?
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