In Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, Cath is a Simon Snow fan. Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan, but 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.
Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.
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?
Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?

My rating: 4.25 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: This book will count for the challenge I am participating in for April, the#ReadingMyLibrary reading challenge. I checked out this book from the Simsbury Public Library. I saw this book awhile ago, can’t remember where, but it looked good so I added it to my TBR list. I saw it at the library and decided to pick it up. I’ve never read anything by this author before, but I have heard a lot of good things.
There were a lot of things I liked about this book. I loved almost all the characters in this story. All of them evolved so much through the book I felt like I was growing and changing with them. Cather is such a great character and I really connected with her on her anxiety issues since I suffer from similar issues a lot of the time. I couldn’t necessarily connect with her on her shyness with boys but overall she was just such an easy character to connect with. And oh my gosh, Levi. If I could pick any of the characters I’ve read about that I would want for a boyfriend, it would be Levi. He is just amazingly sweet and so happy its disgusting and awesome at the same time.
One of the characters I really just didn’t like in the book (mostly because I think I wasn’t supposed to) was the mom, Laura. She was so disinterested in her own daughters and she leaves them when they’re 8 and never contacts them again. But she goes on to get remarried and she has step-kids and that’s ok? And what the hell is with the thing that when she ended up with twins instead of one baby, she didn’t even pick a second name she just split up the one name she had already picked out (Cather + Wren = Catherine). I mean it ended up being cute names for the girls but the mom was just being lazy and it just makes me dislike her more.

There was a good amount of teen angst in this book which is why I stopped reading young adult books a few years ago, it just became too frustrating. This book was not overwhelmingly teen angst though and the story line I still found to be solid and interesting. I couldn’t put this book down yesterday, I was up reading til I finished it at 1am. Great story, great characters, great feels. I will definitely be reading more by this author in the future.