Book Review: Fangirl
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell.
I desperately wanted to love this book. Desperately.
I mean... a book about a girl who lives in a poorly disguised Potterverse, ships what would be Harry/Draco, and in which these words were written:
"Why are you reading that?" Wren had asked when she noticed.
"what?"
"Something without a dragon or an elf on the the cover."
The book, alas, wasn't as awesome as I thought it would be.
Quick summary: Cath and her twin sister Wren go off to college. Wren loves college, Cath has a harder time fitting in, wishing she could continue her old life as a prominent fanfiction writer, with her sister living in the same room as her, and without having to meet other people. Book Seven Eight of the Harry Potter Simon Snow series is coming out at the end of the year, and Cath wants to make sure to finish her monster-fan-fic pre-telling of the book before the author comes along and ruins it all. (Oh man, do I understand that!).
It could have been a good book. What it turned out to be was a girl-meets-boy romance. There were some good points to the book, and the tiny scene where Book Eight comes out, the realisation that after years and years and years, it's all over made me wince in remembered sympathy, though -spoiler alert- it looks like "Gemma T. Leslie was much more true to the characters she wrote than another author I won't name.
It was fun and well written, the excerpts from both Cath's fanfic and GTL's actual book were interesting. Cath, her sister Wren, her roommate Reagan (sigh...), the betrayer-of-Cath's-writing/plagiarist Nick, and the boyfriend Levi are all well sketched out. It was just.... there was real conflict in the book, and it was eventually just... ignored. The mother who had abandoned her family years before shows up, does a teeny bit of plot advancement by widening the gulf between Cath and her sister, and disappears with little to no resolution. That gulf between the twins? It sorta gets resolved, but in a quick and fast sort of way. The plagiarist is dealt with summarily. The problems with Cath's father, again used to advance the plot, resolve too easily. Blah blah blah.
In addition, the ending felt rushed. After pages and pages of boring romance crap, she tried to wrap everything up in too few pages, to the point, where it did not fit and felt rushed and very incomplete.
So yeah. I wanted to love the book. Alas, I did not. In my opinion, it certainly is not worth a purchase, but as a borrow from the library? Yeah. It's sweet and fluffy fun and she does manage to capture some of the fanfic universe well, Cath's feelings about her OTP and about the end of the Harry Potter Simon Snow era.
I desperately wanted to love this book. Desperately.
I mean... a book about a girl who lives in a poorly disguised Potterverse, ships what would be Harry/Draco, and in which these words were written:
"Why are you reading that?" Wren had asked when she noticed.
"what?"
"Something without a dragon or an elf on the the cover."
The book, alas, wasn't as awesome as I thought it would be.
Quick summary: Cath and her twin sister Wren go off to college. Wren loves college, Cath has a harder time fitting in, wishing she could continue her old life as a prominent fanfiction writer, with her sister living in the same room as her, and without having to meet other people. Book Seven Eight of the Harry Potter Simon Snow series is coming out at the end of the year, and Cath wants to make sure to finish her monster-fan-fic pre-telling of the book before the author comes along and ruins it all. (Oh man, do I understand that!).
It could have been a good book. What it turned out to be was a girl-meets-boy romance. There were some good points to the book, and the tiny scene where Book Eight comes out, the realisation that after years and years and years, it's all over made me wince in remembered sympathy, though -spoiler alert- it looks like "Gemma T. Leslie was much more true to the characters she wrote than another author I won't name.
It was fun and well written, the excerpts from both Cath's fanfic and GTL's actual book were interesting. Cath, her sister Wren, her roommate Reagan (sigh...), the betrayer-of-Cath's-writing/plagiarist Nick, and the boyfriend Levi are all well sketched out. It was just.... there was real conflict in the book, and it was eventually just... ignored. The mother who had abandoned her family years before shows up, does a teeny bit of plot advancement by widening the gulf between Cath and her sister, and disappears with little to no resolution. That gulf between the twins? It sorta gets resolved, but in a quick and fast sort of way. The plagiarist is dealt with summarily. The problems with Cath's father, again used to advance the plot, resolve too easily. Blah blah blah.
In addition, the ending felt rushed. After pages and pages of boring romance crap, she tried to wrap everything up in too few pages, to the point, where it did not fit and felt rushed and very incomplete.
So yeah. I wanted to love the book. Alas, I did not. In my opinion, it certainly is not worth a purchase, but as a borrow from the library? Yeah. It's sweet and fluffy fun and she does manage to capture some of the fanfic universe well, Cath's feelings about her OTP and about the end of the Harry Potter Simon Snow era.