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Fangirl | July 31, 2013

by Rainbow Rowell (St. Martin’s Press/ Macmillan, September 2013)

Fangirl is a YA novel about family, friendship, and fiction. Cath and her twin sister, Wren, have always done everything together. They’ve lived in the same room, shared the same clothes, mourned their absent mother together, and loved the wildly popular Simon Snow series together. Even though Cath is the main author of their Simon Snow fanfiction, a series of novels that the online fan community can’t get enough of, Wren has always been by Cath’s side to help plot the love story between Baz and Simon—two boys who detest each other in the actual series.

But when the two girls begin college, everything changes. Wren no longer wants to share everything with Cath, and Cath finds herself alone for the first time. Cath, who doesn’t know the first thing about social interaction that isn’t online, is crushed. First, she hides away in her dorm room subsisting on protein bars and politely ignoring her completely unfriendly and uninterested roommate, Reagan. Then, in an absolutely delightful twist, Regan takes Cath under wing. This relationship is by far my favorite in the story:

“I feel sorry for you, and I’m going to be your friend.”

“I don’t want to be your friend,” Cath said as sternly as she could. “I like that we’re not friends.”

“Me, too,” Reagan said. “I’m sorry you ruined it by being so pathetic.”

It’s this deadpan dialogue that made the book for me. And the fanfiction. Anyone in their 20s who “found” the Internet through Harry Potter fandom will love and deeply connect with this story. Cath’s obsession with the safe world she’s created through her fanfiction, and her difficulty allowing herself to claim her identity as an author in her own right, parallels the story of Cath learning to claim an identity separate from her sister’s.

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