
I’m bringing you another book review. This time, as the title suggests, it’s all about Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell.
Fangirl is about a young woman, Cath, going off to her first year of college and everything that goes along with that. Trying to navigate dorm life, school life, finding friends (or in the case of Cath, not doing the best job at it). Cath runs into issues, feeling home sick to name one, and as you read you see how she handles it all.
As for whether I enjoyed this book or not, I can firmly say that I did. In fact, this is the first Rainbow Rowell book I have fully enjoyed reading. I have read two others, Attachments and Landline, and wasn’t the biggest fan. This time around, I think I have a reason for liking this book so much.
I identify with the plot and the main character. It’s all about her dealing with her introvertedness while also going to classes and trying to make friends. I too am an introvert, which means I like my alone time. I think a lot of the time in my years at college it took me a bit to make the friends that I did.
I also liked that the book took place in the Midwest, Nebraska to be exact. Reading all the references not only to Midwest things, but also to just college in general, was fun. I went to two Midwest schools for undergrad and as I was reading, I did a lot of comparison.
There were also three characters that I absolutely fell in love with while reading. The first, of course, was Cath. The second was Cath’s roommate, Reagan. Reagan is older and much tougher. Reagan becomes Cath’s unconventional big sister-type person and shows her the ropes of college. They are total opposites, which is what I love about their dynamic. I like that their “friendship” represents the opposites do attract concept. The last character I liked, until about the middle of the book, was Liam. We actually meet Liam as Reagan’s boyfriend. He was the one that always hung out in their room and always waited outside the door waiting to be let in by either Reagan or Cath. He annoyed Cath, until he didn’t, if you know what I mean. Yes, spoiler alert! Something does happen between these two.
The last thing I really enjoyed about this book is the excerpts between the chapters. Okay, let me explain. Cath is a fanfic writer and she writes it based on these books by Gemma T. Leslie. These books are called the Simon Snow series and are definitely a reference to Harry Potter. Anyway, the excerpts I was just talking about are either from Cath’s fanfic or from the books themselves. I don’t know what is that I like about them, I just do. If I had to hazard a guess, it would probably be that I got a feel for the character’s personality.
Okay, if I were to give this book a Goodreads rating (by the way, I do have a Goodreads account and you will see this rating there) it would be 4 stars out of 5 stars.
Have you read this book? What did you like or not like about it? Do you like books like this? If not, what is your favorite genre? I’d love to hear you answers in the comments below.
Thanks for reading!
Jess xx