This book nearly made me want to be a teenager again nearly.

Its Cathy Averys first year at university. She is a slightly awkward, reserved character preferring writing her fan-fiction of Simon Snow (Harry Potter) than having a typical university experience. Her twin sister, Wren, however wants to experience it all and on her own, forcing Cath to room with a stranger and well out of her comfort zone. Fangirl adds a subtle development of each character through themes of abandonment in differing types of relationships and mental health. Caths relationship with Levi is pretty adorable you cant almost help but wish you could go through it again. Rainbow Rowell writes with an effortlessness, delivering a breezy coming of age story.

No one told me a bunny rabbit and a kitten had a love child and that love child wrote a book.

WHY NOT!?

This book was just SO cute. And SO good.

Fangirl is the story of Cath and what she has to go through when she has to uproot her life and move to college. Cath and her twin sister Wren used to be super-close and they always had eachother to fangirl with. But that was before college. Now Wren is trying to mature a little (what a weirdo) and pull away from Cath and her old life a little.

Bascially Cath is my alter-ego. Seriously. We both are extremely (EXTREMELY) shy people. I was reading this book and was basically like 'Oh. So this is what would happen if I lived in America and therefore went to college' the whole time I was reading it.

I love how Rainbow Rowell always knows just how to tackle an issue. It's actually pretty amazing. She can take something cool and make it ten times cooler. And a YA book about fanfiction is pretty cool. While I don't read fanfiction myself, it was amazing to actually learn more about it and I actually kinda understand it more now. I never realised what a big thing it was, which sounds kinda terrible. But you can tell that Rainbow Rowell has seriously done her research.

The only other book by Raibow Rowell other than Fangirl that I've read is Eleanor and Park, and already I can see a common theme between the two that I am a fan of: the way that the author handles the tough stuff. She really does do a phenomenal job. Not only are her books realistic in the way they are written, but also in the way that her characters act and deal with tough times.

I'd love to say that I'm freaking out over the release of the Simon Snow fanfiction book thing that the author is releasing later on this year, but I can't really say that I'm bothered. While the fanfiction in the book was ok, it seemed a little like the same thing every time it came up. Baz and Simon fighting everytime and then a lovey dovey moment. Meh. Unless it was the actual author of actual Simon Snow books (her name might of been Gemma T. Leslie or something? I probably got that wrong), then it was just boring but at least it wasn't always the same. However, that being said, I actually preferred Cath's fanfiction over the actual stuff.

I actually have so many book boyfriends it's ridiculous but I have another now. Levi. Oh my goodness. WOW. He is actually like my dream guy (well, if I was being super picky he'd have dark hair...but...that's weird). He was cute and funny and smart and perfect and amazing. And I ran out of adjectives. But really, believe me, he's great. Better than great, actually.

If you still haven't read Fangirl, then what are you doing. And I actually shouldn't be one to judge since it took me so long to read it myself but build a bridge. Sorry, that was rude. I'm getting passionate. Shoot me. But please don't.

4/5 comets
Meteor shower. A great show.

I told myself that I would start reading more contemporary books this year but so far this one is the only one I have read. So many people have recommended it to me and I'm am so happy I picked this one up! It was such an amazing book that left me wanting more. It is such a cute story that takes you on a roller coaster of emotions. If you are looking for a contemporary novel to get lost in, I highly recommend this one to you! This is an easy read that I'm sure most of you will enjoy. I certainly did and I can't wait to read another book by Rainbow Rowell.

This was recommended to me by a friend and I am so glad that it was. The book itself was fun-loving and so easy to read. The character development made you feel like you were in their shoes experiencing everything along side them. You can't help but fall in love with the story and characters

Cath's struggle to emerge from her books and into the world will be recognisable to many a bookish girl. A sweet, entertaining college novel.

This is my first Rainbow Rowell book and I’m quite glad about it. It’s almost the story of my life: socially inept Cath has just gone off to college for the first time and can’t really deal with it. Her twin sister, Wren, wants to develop her own independence and Cath feels like she’s being left behind. While Wren is all about going out and meeting boys and partying, Cath is more comfortable in the dark corner of her room writing fanfiction. She’s going to have to learn to open up and accept life if she wants to survive in her new circumstances.

I adored this book for the most part, again, because I can relate to a socially awkward main character who sits in the dark disappearing into the world of fiction. She’s in her first year of college in a scary new place; I’m in my first year of uni after moving to a new area far from where I grew up. I function better in fantasy worlds; she lives in the world of her fanfiction. The similarities go on and on.

HOWEVER. I’m being generous with 4 stars after what I thought of the ending. It was really very anticlimactic save for the very last page which gave an answer to one of the questions. And I’m not a cliff-hanger-Grinch, I do love the openness of a cliff-hanger. But in the end I thought it was just used to excess. I came out of it with a lot of questions about things that weren’t entirely wrapped up.

Regardless! If you’re a nerd girl, or even a nerd boy, I’d recommend it to you. Maybe you won’t have as much of an issue with the ending as I did, but the rest of the story is a very funny, giggly, feel-good ride.

This book is made for Fangirls like me, so many things in this book i just went "yep, that's me alright"..... and I've never read any books about the Fandom culture before and being in that culture I was so excited to find one that i could pick up and relate too. I loved reading from the point of view of the main character Wren... she's very easy to imagine as someone you know or even to put yourself into her shoes.... It was just a good book from start to finish and well written

As a self-proclaimed fangirl, I was very cautious of reading this book. It sounded perfect, but it could so easily slip into a clichd mess. A few positive reviews gave me the confidence to pick it up and I devoured it in two sittings. Fangirl is the most relatable book I've ever read. Cath is a socially awkward writer of Simon Snow fanfiction. When her outgoing twin sister decides they need to live in separate rooms at college, Cath is forced out if her comfort zone.

This book had me flying through the whole spectrum of emotions - laughing, fangirl-squealing, crying, yelling "don't do it!", cringing... There is not one page of this novel I didn't enjoy or that I didn't relate to. Having said that, I don't think everyone will enjoy this book as much as I did.

Cath suffers from social anxiety, and it affects most of the choices she makes. If you are not a person who has ever felt anxiety about an unfamiliar social situation, or if you've never chosen to stay home because you were too scared of going out, you will find yourself frustrated with Cath. You will be yelling "just go!" to her and you won't understand why she keep choosing to stay home. What you need to understand is that she's yelling the same things to herself, much louder, but it's not convincing enough to beat the fear. So she makes the safe choices.

Apart from this aspect, it's a fun, entertaining contemporary novel with friendships, romance and writing which also touches on some more serious issues of mental health and family.

I've heard so much good things about this book that I've been dying to read it for ages. But with so many books on my currently-reading & TBR lists, I didn't get around to it until now. And oh my goodness, it's amazing.

There are some contemporary young adult books that I read because they are light and fun. There are some I read so that I can live vicariously through the characters, knowing that my university days weren't like that but wouldn't it have been fun if they were. And then there's this book - which just gets me on so many levels that while reading it, I felt like I have been literally living a life similar to Cath's.

Like Cath, I had to make some pretty big changes in order to attend university. I was 17 and alone in the country with my parents halfway around the other side of the world. Like Cath, I literally spent most of my high school spare times reading fiction and then, whenever the mood struck, reading and writing fanfiction. The move to university seemed daunting and there were days where all I wanted to do was go back to my room in my shared house, curl up with a good book and just ignore the rest of the world for awhile.

Cath Avery, for me, is a soul sister I never knew I had. She just feels so real. Everything she thinks and do are just so relatable. If you've ever had an awkward moment or incident in your life or if, like me, you're just socially awkward in general, then you would definitely feel like you share a kindred spirit with her too. Cath is not perfect - she freaks out sometimes, she makes bad decisions sometimes and she lets people walk over her or degrade her and her interests without retaliation. If you tell me that you've never done any of those things in your life, there is no way I would believe you.

As I progress through this book, I literally get sucked into Cath's world and it almost feels like I'm living her every step. This is not a book filled with tension and drama yet its simplicity is part of its charm. In Fangirl, obstacles and bumps are thrown in at random - just as how life works. Things happen to Cath along the way and you observe her deal with it in her own manner. Sometimes it isn't the right way. Sometimes her decisions aren't exactly the smart ones. But then again, Cath isn't going to change magically overnight and neither are any of us. Through examining her and her life, I can't help but identify some of those similar quirks and tendencies in myself.

And the romance! I won't spoil you regarding the who, the when, the how etc. because I think this is a really good example of how good romance can be set up without a) being the entire focus of the story and b) without being insta-love that it feels like it would only happen in books. I think possibly the best word I can use to sum up Fangirl is that everything about it is just so real. You read this and bask in the feels and you know that this could happen in real life.

However, there are a couple of minor issues I did have with the book that prevented me from giving it a perfect score. While I do enjoy reading and writing fanfiction (perhaps not to the same degree of success as Cath but at times, certainly to similar degrees of enthusiasm), Cath's particular love of Simon and Baz (the two guys in her thought bubble on the front cover) is one aspect of fandoms that I still struggle to get into/comprehend. I don't have issues with it or homosexuality, but just like in Harry Potter how I fail to identify a romantic link between Sirius & Remus or Harry & Draco, I come across such fanfiction works and I just can't see how these pairings would fit into the canon universe. So when Cath went gushing about Simon and Baz, those are the only moments I felt like she was talking in a foreign language to me. But then again, that's fandom for you - you can move the characters around and play with them however you like.

While on the subject of fandom, I'm not sure I'm 100% comfortable with Rowell's depiction of what being a fangirl is. Cath's comment about how, sometimes, in some ways, she writes better than the actual author. That comment, no matter how padded it was with Cath's admiration for the author of the original work, just grates me a little bit. Another aspect was something that happened in the book with her professor who, as you can tell in the book summary, isn't a supporter of fanfiction. Without going into it in too much detail, I just can't see any professors being as lenient as Cath's.

However, these issues are such minor aspects and didn't detract from my enjoyment of this book at all.

And the ending! Everything came neatly together without being fairy tale perfect. It was absolutely heartwarming, seeing how Cath has progressed through her freshman year and grown in the process. The subtlety with which Rowell summed up everything is something I really admired about this book.

I absolutely love this book. As soon as I finished the last page, I knew this will very likely become one of my 2014 favourites. I highly recommend this to pretty much everyone.

Fangirl is an absolutely beautiful book. It relates rather closely to how some people are today. Cather is a teenager who likes to write fanfiction, her current one is pretty popular and well-known. She starts school being a really awkward and anti-social person but she slowly starts to let a few people into her life and gets into a relationship with someone. I recommend it to those who want a nice,calm contemporary book to read.

RATE: 4.5 STARS

I ordered this book because I had heard so much hype about it. This was easily one of the most relatable books I have ever read in my life. There were lots of references that all us fangirls would know. Particularly when Cath (the main character) was talking to her roomate, Reagan about fandoms, and Reagan had no idea what fandoms were. This wasn't the sort of book where you'd ball your eyes out after reading it. It was mostly happy and it is the sort of book I'd read after reading a sad and traumatising book, aka Allegiant or TFIOS. This was the first book that I have read from Rainbow Rowell and I can't wait to read her other books!