Fangirl

I’m a total fangirl for Fangirl.  I picked up this book from the library because I knew friends who gushed over Rainbow Rowell, the author, and because I’d just read her adult book Attachments and thought it was cute.  Being a nerd-girl myself, I totally got into this book.

Cath and her twin sister, Wren, are off to college.  While Cath is introverted and awkward (like their bipolar father), Wren is social and outgoing…and has decided she wants a break from “twinning.”  Cath now has to navigate college life alone.  Not only that, Cath also is a secret Internet celebrity, writing fan fiction for a popular set of magic books (about Simon Snow, who is totally a rip off of Harry Potter but it’s done so on purpose).  Baz and Simon, the two main characters in her stories, are the only thing keeping her sane at college, but when her fiction writing professor critiques her for writing fan fiction, she’s thrown off her game and wondering if she truly has a place in the writing world.  To make her feelings more complicated, there’s some boy drama with a kid in her writing class, her roommate’s boyfriend is always hanging out in their room, and her father is starting to spiral into an unhealthy manic state without the twins there to reign him in.

I just feel for Cath.  As a person who’s introverted, I understand a lot of her social anxieties, just on a lesser scale.  For example, the first week or two of school Cath doesn’t eat in her dorm’s dining hall because she doesn’t know where it’s located, she’s too shy to ask anyone for help, and she doesn’t know what the dining hall protocol is (where do you wait for food?  How do you pay?  Where do you sit?  What if you have no one to sit with?).  For me this would cause a mild level of anxiety but my hangry attitude would win in the end and I would suck it up where Cath just lived off her stash of protein bars.

All the characters are very well-written and very believable:  Cath's roommate Reagan with her no-nonsense attitude, Levi with his overly chivalrous charismatic personality, Wren and her roommate’s typical college girl personas, Cath’s dad’s brilliant yet manic state of disarray.  The writing makes you feel for the characters and root for your favorites.

Another part of this story is that it’s really a story within a story.  In between some of the chapters, there are “excerpts” from the made up magic novels and some of Cath’s own fan fiction stories.  Rowell has taken on three writing personas:  one as herself writing the story of Cath, one as Gemma T. Larson—the author of the Simon Snow books—and one as Cath writing her fan fiction.  They all have their own voice, and I just admire Rowell’s writing ability.  The fan fiction story Cath is writing in this story—Carry On—actually has it’s own spin-off novel by Rowell, so if you are interested in more Simon and Baz action, you can check it out.

This book is one of those that makes you feel better when you’re sad.  It reminds you it’s okay to not be perfect.  It reminds you that everyone has their own battles to fight (fictional or otherwise).