If there is one emotion that Fangirl left me with, I would have to pinpoint it as confusion.
After pondering how one single book, with a few hundred pages of black and white text, could leave me in such a state of bewilderment, the pure and utter emotional turmoil of this book left me with the afterthoughts of nothing but the characters and what their lives would turn out to be.
Cath is shy, socially awkward, an introvert with a passion: fanfiction. Wren is her twin, who is outgoing, friendly, wild. Reagan is Cath's roommate, Levi is her ex-boyfriend, and Nick is her writing partner. Her father is a workaholic, with, well, let's call them issues, just to not be too descriptive.
And this is their story. Well, Cath's mostly, but theirs as well.
Cath is in college, and is extremely nervous to be there. How in the world was this going to be easy for her, she wasn't boisterous like Wren, nor did she make friends easily. Or at all.
How was she supposed to navigate around the huge campus, to the cafeteria, and around all these new people and parties? Even her own twin doesn't want to have anything to do with her.
But, with Rainbow Rowell's exceptional writing, we see the real Cath. The Cath that slowly comes out of her shell with Nick during all the evenings and nights they spend writing in a notebook, because computers lose the purity of actually writing. With Reagan, who realises that Cath has no friends, and decides to take her under her wing. And then there's Levi.
Sweet, perfect, Levi.
And Fangirl is also about fangirling. Fanfiction, over the Simon Snow series. And how Cath lives for writing her version of the story. How it becomes more important that writing her own stories, and how she must learn to change that.
"You don't push through every moment. You pay attention. You take everything in. I like that about you – I like that better. I like your glasses," he said. "I like your Simon Snow T-shirts. I like that you don't smile at everyone, because then, when you smile at me…"
Fangirl was the first book of Rainbow Rowell's that I've read, and I definitely want more. I loved the way she made Cath develop her relationships, intensify them and create problems within them; how not once did the characters do something that you couldn't imagine they would do, but still leaving those cute moments when you could smile, and others when you'd be shocked at the turn of events.
A book that you will devour in one sitting because leaving this world will simply be impossible. READ IT! – 4 stars.
• Buy this book at the Guardian Bookshop.
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