Book review: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

BOOK REVIEW: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Fangirl
by Rainbow Rowell
Book description from Goodreads:

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Eleanor & Park.

A coming-of-age tale of fan fiction, family and first love.

Cath is a Simon Snow fan.

Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan...

But for Cath, being a fan is her life—and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.

Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.

Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.

Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words... And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.

For Cath, the question is: Can she do this?

Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?

And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?

"Touching and utterly real." —  Publisher's Weekly

Goodreads Link 

My review:

***3 STARS***

Ugh. I really wanted to like this. I saw tons of good reviews everywhere and Fangirl is the current hype in the YA market. People loved it. They adored it. My book store loved it. So I wanted to love it too. The blurb seemed intriguing enough. Cathy was a fanfic writer. I'm a fanfic writer. I understand fandom, trust me. I'm part of the fandom for korean dramas, mangas, animes, other books. I went cray-cray stalking authors/ celebrities - all for the love of fandom. 

So present me a book about fandom, and I'd be like 'heck yeah!' *bumps fist* This heroine is so me! 

So I dived straight into the book.

And got disappointment. 

My book reading average around 3 hours per book. But I spent the whole day reading this book.

This long book. 

This freakishly long book. 

By my standards, 460 pages isn't a lot. I read LOTR, I know what long is. But reading Fangirl made my whole day dragged on with mundane boringness that made me want to sleep, but I kept saying, 'just one more chapter, maybe I'll get better.'

It didn't.

This isn't a story about fandom. This is a story about an overly obsessed heroine when it comes to Simon Cowell Snow. I'm not like her at all and I can put my hands up and say tons of fangirls aren't like her at all. If you check the reviews on goodreads, many low stars reviews are mostly written about the misinterpretation of fandom. 

Because it's not like that at all. 

Cath for one thing was one boring person. She was highly an introvert (I'm also a hermit crab) but even I'm not that depressed. I enjoy being in my own solitude but with her, it's like solitude is so damn depressing that even her roommate had to pull her out of the room saying she looked too pathetic. 

I disliked Wren. She was that typical stereotype party-goer who drinks and gets stoned and all the drama hoo hah. 

I read my fair share of alpha heroes and cool male protagonists. Levi didn't fit the bill. I couldn't bring his character to life. To me, he was simply a 2D character. 

Nick - oh boy. *flips finger*

There were waaaay too many pages about Simon and Baz (fictional characters written by fanfic writer, Cath). There were snippets of them, stories about them that I didn't care for. There were bloody pages. I skipped those pages. I wasn't interested in those fanfics, and I didn't like how their stories took up a lot of pages. 

In a nutshell, I just couldn't relate to Cath or any of the characters. 

Believe me, I wanted to enjoy this book. But the book dragged on so much, the pace was slow and I read it with my brain half-asleep. It was like reading a grocery list.