Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell Review

Book - Fangirl

Author - Rainbow Rowell

My Rating - ★★☆☆☆

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 would rather bury herself in the fanfiction she writes where there's romance far more intense than anything she's experienced in real life.

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 ...

A tale of fanfiction, family and first love.

Ok wow, this book was disappointing.

I was expecting a cute, fluffy contemporary novel that would make me laugh and that was not what I got? I don't get the hype.

This book focuses a lot on the characters, which isn't a positive for me. Other than the main character, Cath, and her roommate, I didn't actually care for any of the characters. I found that they were bland or boring or unlikable. Wren irritated me beyond belief, Levi was so bland and her mother sucks. I appreciated Cath's father, a single parent who is having to cope with both of his daughters leaving home for University at the same time. He's obviously struggling with his mental health and I appreciate that Rainbow Rowell included that representation of having an ill parent.

Cath was the honestly the only reason I pushed through and finished the book. She is a freshman at University, and this book is all about her adapting to a completely style of life whilst coping with anxiety. Her anxiety was so relatable for me. Her character growth is my favourite thing about this novel. We watch her morph from an uncomfortable teenager who finds it difficult to even leave her room to get food to eat, to a much more confident woman who pushes herself and has developed many newfound relationships and finally is beginning to understand and find herself. The anxiety representation, at least in my opinion, was done so well.

However, Cath's character was honestly the only positive in this book for me. The plot was non-existent, and the Simon and Baz references were so tedious. It got to the point that I didn't even read them, I skipped all of the Simon and Baz excerpts, which is shocking since everyone loved those scenes and those characters. I understand that this novel is called, 'Fangirl', and is about Cath being a fangirl and obsessing over Simon and Baz, but I just didn't care about them? I'm not sure if that's because Rainbow Rowell didn't spend enough time at the start of the book making us fall in love with them. The scenes where Cath is reading out parts of her fan fiction, and then the excerpts between chapters of Simon and Baz felt unnecessary, they added nothing to the story and honestly didn't care about them.

The writing style was average for me. I found the dialogue extremely cringey at times. That's all I have to say about that...

I really wanted to like this. Fangirl seems to be a favourite for many people in the book community, and it sucks that I just didn't enjoy it at all.

That's all from me, thank you for reading! ♡

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