Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell -- A Review

So I finally finished reading Rainbow Rowell's novel Fangirl, and I really liked it. This is a wonderfully sprawling book that explores all kinds of things that young people can experience when they move away from home for the first time.

Cather and Wren are identical sisters who’ve shared everything their entire lives, including their love of the Simon Snow fantasy fiction series they read together when they were kids. Now that they're about to start their first year of college, however, Wren has chosen someone else to be her roommate, leaving Cath to explore this new world almost completely on her own. While Wren seems able to shed her past like a snake sheds its skin, Cath has a much harder time of it, suffering from anxiety attacks as she tries to force herself to take more steps outside of her comfort zone and take advantage of what college life has to offer.

One thing that Cath has held onto from her pre-college days is writing her Simon Snow online fanfiction. She pours herself daily into her online stories about the fantasy book's main characters, Simon and Baz, garnering a strong fanbase following, while finding it increasingly difficult to write original fiction for her writing professor, who considers fanfiction to be the same thing as plagiarism, no matter what Cath might say. Along with this, she has to deal with Reagan, her surly roommate and her charming, always-around boyfriend Levi;  Nick, a cute classmate who only wants to talk with her about words; and then there’s her father, who’s never really been alone before and who Cath now worries about constantly. Over the course of this first year of college, Cath must figure out if she can let go of her sister and really start living life on her own, even if it might mean leaving Simon Snow behind.

I found this book to be very enjoyable, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for something good to read this summer. I thought the characters were very well-drawn, and the college setting was nicely used to help convey the kind of student life that would be there. I also thought that the story of Cath's struggle to find herself in this new place without losing touch with her past was very poignant. I look forward to reading more by this author in the future.

Have you read Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl? Let me know what you think.

Also available as an Audiobook.
And as an eAudiobook.