Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

 Lynnie


Young Adult, Contemporary Fiction 

I wanted to like Fangirl, I really did. And yet, in the end, I don't.

I love the way Rainbow Rowell writes about people. Her characters are always wonderful & charming- jumping off the page with their personalities. The book had a lot of potential- a girl (& her twin) going to college for their freshman year and their first real time apart as the main character, Cath tries to find out who she really is. When the book focused on that, it was engaging & often quite good.

BUT- Cath isn't just a fangirl. No, she writes her own fan-fiction & has a huge online following. The problem: we are forced to read pages & pages & pages & pages of Cath's fan-fiction that REALLY has little to do with the story at hand. I don't care to read fan-fiction about a fictional book (that is meant to remind you of Harry Potter anyway). So eventually I just began to skim those parts- because they weren't relevant to the story I wanted to read about, the story of Cath. While I appreciated that the stories were important TO Cath, that didn't make them move the story of Fangirl forward in any way.

So, in the end it's a 2-star book. Thumbs up for the story of someone trying to find their way in college and the great characters, but thumbs way down for the "book in a book" aspect because it was overdone and unnecessary.