And here it is. Just when I thought I wouldn’t read anything better than The Fault in Our Stars this year, Rainbow Rowell proves me to be horribly, wonderfully wrong. You want to know how good this book was? It was so good that I started listening to it as an audiobook in my car, got frustrated that I don’t spend enough time in my car every day (I average about two hours commuting to and from work every day) to listen to it quickly enough, borrowed my sister’s copy and finished it in one evening. That good.
There have been many reviews of Fangirl on CBR so far, so you probably don’t need a plot summary. Let me just add my opinion that Rainbow Rowell has a firm and wonderful grasp on:
–fanfiction — the point that you get to where you can’t remember what’s canon, and what the fandom has created? I’ve totally been guilty of that….
–being sad: “Too much crying, she thought. Too many kinds. She was tired of being the one who cried.”
–nerds: “To really be a nerd, she’d decided, you had to prefer fictional worlds to the real one.”
–anxiety: “In new situations, all the trickiest rules are the ones nobody bothers to explain to you. (And the ones you can’t Google.)”
and all sorts of other things that rang perfectly true to me, and might to you, too.
And there’s romance, and heartbreak, and family, and Cath’s roommate might be one of my favorite fictional characters, ever. Reagan needs her own book! “If God put me into your life to keep you from wearing a fucking tail,” Reagan said, “I accept the assignment.”
Read it. You won’t regret it.