Fangirl: Book Reviews #2

 - I really liked it

"Fangirl is a deliciously warm-hearted nerd power ballad destined for greatness."

     If you like gingerbread lattes, hilarious nerd references and Harry Potter, and you consider yourself as a nerd (even slightly), this one is for you. The main reason I enjoyed this book enormously is because I found absolutely everything in it relevant to my own personal experience. It is just crazy. It is the story of Cath, an eighteen years old girl who is terrified to go to university and hides her fears in writing, in expressing herself through the things she love. Writing is the one part of her life that makes sense. In one of her classes in college, her professor asks them Why do we write fiction?, and Cath thinks to herself To disappear. She is scared of everything - making friends, going to her classes, even eating in the dinning hall  so she does the one thing that makes her feel safe - writing fan-fiction about Simon Snow. It is a made up series that seriously resembles Harry Potter. I don't know if Rainbow Rowell had this in mind, in particular, and I don't care, but that is what it felt to me and I really enjoyed it.

     Another matter that I wanted to point out to, were the funny nerd references she made throughout the whole novel. They cracked me up so much. When I think about her coming here, she said, it is like that scene in the Fellowship of the Ring when the hobbits are hiding from the Nazgul. That is my personal favorite, really relevant (she is talking about the mother who left her when she was eight, coming to visit them). Everything in this book is built up with nerd power. That is the main idea that I enjoyed it so much. I have missed Harry Potter for a very long time, and at the same time, I love reading contemporary, everyday novels. But Fangirl is a great mixture of them two. On the one hand, you have the mundane problems that everyone can relate to and on the other, the magical world where you can escape. It is a brilliant idea, someone should have thought of it earlier. 
      As a whole, the characters were very believable and empathetic, most of them. I found Wren, Cath's twin sister, quite annoying and frankly stupid. Besides her, they were all lovable, especially Levi and Cath's father, Art. The connection she had with her father was sweet and loving and it made me all mushy and teary. The only irrelevant thing, for me anyway, were her boy problems. Cath was really inexperienced and I get that, but some of the things she thought and did were genuinely foolish. At first I thought she would go for Nick, her writing buddy, and was actually surprised by the turn of events. Also, her relationship with her roommate, Reagan, was hilarious. I love how bad-ass and down-to-earth she is. 
    Most importantly, this book thought me that pushing through your comfort zone is very important in life. I slightly already learned that myself by going through first year of university, but Cath also gave me a very valuable lesson. Her father was ill and she still pushed through university. She was so desperate, without any ideas about her story, but she did it anyway. It was four months late, with thousands excuses and delays, but she succeeded. And won. So, girls and boys, even if there seems to be no light in the tunnel, just keep pushing and you will triumph. 
~I.