Not Fangirling Over Fangirl

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Genre: YA, Contemp. 

Published: September 10th, 2013 by Pan Macmillan 

Format: Paperback

Source: Bought my own copy. 

Cath and Wren are identical twins, and until recently they did absolutely everything together. Now they’re off to university and Wren’s decided she doesn’t want to be one half of a pair any more – she wants to dance, meet boys, go to parties and let loose. It’s not so easy for Cath. She’s horribly shy and has always buried herself in the fan fiction she writes, where she always knows exactly what to say and can write a romance far more intense than anything she’s experienced in real life. Without Wren Cath is completely on her own and totally outside her comfort zone. She’s got a surly room-mate 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. Now Cath has to decide whether she’s ready to open her heart to new people and new experiences, and she’s realizing that there’s more to learn about love than she ever thought possible …

Oh I can already smell the controversy this review may cause.

WHY do I not like the books everyone dies hard for?

Again, as I do for most popular books, this will not be my typical style of review.

What I didn’t like:

Simon Snow.

I didn’t like the Simon Snow bits in-between chapters or when Cath read out her Fan Fiction. WHY? It felt so pointless. I GOT that Simon Snow is Cath’s life, okay? I didn’t need to read a book inside of a book to understand that. I barely coped with the snippets at the start of each chapter, but when Cath started reading her fan fiction? I have one word – boring. It was boring, useless, didn’t really add to the story. I read Fangirl for Cath NOT SIMON SNOW. I DON’T CARE about Simon Snow. I just needed to understand that Cath does, but I didn’t need to read pages and pages of pointless Simon Snow fan fic to understand that.

I actually didn’t find Cath all that relatable. Sometimes, she would say or do something and I was like AH, THAT’S ME! But it didn’t happen very often and it wasn’t all that spectacular. I can find a little of myself in a lot of fictional characters. She wasn’t something special for me like she is for a lot of my bookish, fangirl friends.

I didn’t like Levi all that much – in saying that, I probably related to him more than anyone else in the book. I also didn’t believe Cath and Levi’s attraction. They were a weird couple and I just couldn’t invest myself in it because I didn’t believe they liked each other.

I DID like Raven, though again, I thought Cath and Raven’s friendship was really weird. I just didn’t get it.

I liked the other components of the book – it was told really well, all the characters were unique and real (ish), I followed the story easily and enjoyed it! Though it didn’t make me feel anything. I didn’t get emotional. It was entertaining, but didn’t reach that spectacular level because it didn’t get me, the girl that can cry over anything to feel anything.

So… 3 breezy birds from me.