Book: Fangirl
Genre: New Adult, Romance
Pages: 459
Time to Read: 5 days

S Y N O P S I S

Cath + Wren are identical twins but have two completely different attitudes towards their freshman year of college. Wren wants to party, meet boys and get crazy drunk. Cath, on the other hand, hardly ever leaves her dorm room due to social anxiety and having an incredible amount of people reading and wanting more of her online fan fiction. Through the first few months of college, many people come in and out of Cath’s life to send her on an eventful journey of self-discovery.

W H A T  I  L I K E D

It’s a book about writing. There’s not much I love more than books or movies or TV shows about writing. It’s when I can relate to the characters most: when they are like me. And in books about writing, I find a lot of advice. It makes me happy.

I also loved the storyline. Finally reading something realistic! With no ‘happy ending’ or even a solid ending. We know Cath’s life is going to continue and this is only the beginning of her journey as a writer and hopefully there is more to come from Rowell. But everything was realistic and the problems were real and believable.

W H A T  I  D I D N ‘ T  L I K E

The Simon Snow Snippets. I found them boring and hard to get into. It also was really like Harry Potter, I thought. I usually skipped them.

F A V O U R I T E  C H A R A C T E R

Cath, obviously. I am Cath and Cath is me. I love to write and read and my ideal Saturday night is tucked in with a book.

The way that Rowell portrayed her social anxiety was so respectful and touching. She never actually stated that she had social anxiety; she just gave us glimpses of Cath’s ‘craziness’. Cath was dimensional and not in a predictable way. I just loved her.

L E A S T  F A V O U R I T E  C H A R A C T E R

I liked them all. Even though there were people that weren’t nice, they were all great characters with little quirks. It’s clear that Rowell did character profiles for all of these people before she began writing.

I have to say I did not like Levi at some points. The first half of the book, I LOVED him. But after the kitchen scene, I just couldn’t latch on to him again. Maybe if I read it again, I will.

F A V O U R I T E  S C E N E (mini but irrelevant spoiler)

The whole part where Wren got alcohol poisoning and everyone realised how fragile life was and they all made up. Also, where Cath and Wren got the final book of the series. That made me smile. ALSO… the scene where the professor asks why we write. It made me feel like I was at uni.

D I D  I T  C H A N G E  M E ?

Hopefully. There was a lot of good advice in that book and the fact that Cath made time to write every day made me very jealous. I don’t write nearly as enough as I should.

F I N A L  T H O U G H T S

5/5 stars.

I loved reading this funny, creative + emotional story on my honeymoon by the seaside. I will definitely be reading it again.

Q U O T E S

Because I was on my honeymoon, I didn’t have anything to jot down my favourite quotes with so these are a few from Goodreads.

“In new situations, all the trickiest rules are the ones nobody bothers to explain to you. (And the ones you can’t Google.)”

“Just… isn’t giving up allowed sometimes? Isn’t it okay to say, ‘This really hurts, so I’m going to stop trying’?”
“It sets a dangerous precedent.”
“For avoiding pain?”
“For avoiding life.”

“To really be a nerd, she’d decided, you had to prefer fictional worlds to the real one.”

“Underneath this veneer of slightly crazy and mildly socially retarded, I’m a complete disaster.”

“You’ve read the books?”
“I’ve seen the movies.”
Cath rolled her eyes so hard, it hurt. (Actually.) (Maybe because she was still on the edge of tears. On the edge, period.) “So you haven’t read the books.”
“I’m not really a book person.”
“That might be the most idiotic thing you’ve ever said to me” (how i feel any time someone says that to me…)

“Happily ever after, or even just together ever after, is not cheesy,” Wren said. “It’s the noblest, like, the most courageous thing two people can shoot for.”

“Real life was something happening in her peripheral vision.”

“How do you not like the Internet? That’s like saying, ‘I don’t like things that are convenient. And easy. I don’t like having access to all of mankind’s recorded discoveries at my fingertips. I don’t like light. And knowledge.”

“Sometimes writing is running downhill, your fingers jerking behind you on the keyboard the way your legs do when they can’t quite keep up with gravity.”

“Cath felt like she was swimming in words. Drowning in them, sometimes.”

“Because I’m the kind of girl who fantasizes about being trapped in a library overnight.” (HAHAHAH OMG I FORGOT ABOUT THIS!!)

“I want to live in your head.”