Book Review: Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell

Title: Fangirl

Author: Rainbow Rowell
Release Date: September 10th 2013

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Age Group: Young Adult

Source: Bought
Goodreads

Cath and Wren are identical twins, and until recently they did absolutely everything together. Now they're off to university and Wren's decided she doesn't want to be one half of a pair any more - she wants to dance, meet boys, go to parties and let loose. It's not so easy for Cath. She's horribly shy and has always buried herself in the fan fiction she writes, where she always knows exactly what to say and can write a romance far more intense than anything she's experienced in real life.

Without Wren, Cath is completely on her own and totally outside her comfort zone. She's got a surly room-mate 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.

Now Cath has to decide whether she's ready to open her heart to new people and new experiences, and she's realizing that there's more to learn about love than she ever thought possible.

Fangirl was in my TBR list for a long time. It sounded like the story of my life, mainly because I've been referring to myself as a fangirl since I was thirteen, and it didn't hurt that it was written by Rainbow Rowell AKA the genius behind Eleanor & Park. Now that I've read this, I can say that I loved it... but it's not my favorite Rowell book.

The story introduces us to Cath, a girl who prefers staying in with her family and her fanfics because of her social anxiety, as she enters college without her dad and her twin sister Wren by her side. Wren has decided that college is the perfect time to meet new people and step away from Cath, so while she's busy getting shit-faced every weekend with her roommate - who is not her sister - Cath shuts out the world and keeps to her safe zone, full of Simon Snow fanfiction and solace.

Underneath this veneer of slightly crazy and mildly socially retarded, I'm a complete disaster.

A hundred pages in, I realized that this was going to be a long read, but a lovely one, like listening to a friend vent about her life for hours. Cath feels lost and alone in college, and at one point she even thinks of quitting and going home to attend community college, but soon her hard-edged roommate takes pity on her and said roommate's kind-of boyfriend befriends her, pestering her to unknowingly open herself up. 

Aside from her social (and romantic) growth, we also watch Cath grow as a writer. She learns that writing is not all fun and easy as with her fanfics, but that there are times when she will face a wall and have to write her way through it. She even learns, unfortunately, that not everyone who tries to get close to her truly wants to be friends with her.

Real life was something happening in her peripheral vision.

A hearty novel chock full of sisterhood and friendship and going out of your comfort zone, Fangirl will keep you entertained for hours. It made me wish I could write like Cath does when she's in the zone, focused and unable to distract for hours on end. The romance between Cath and Levi made me squeal and giggle stupidly, and the Simon Snow snippets between every chapter make me need to buy a copy of Carry On some time soon.

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Book Review: Eleanor & Park - Rainbow Rowell

Title: Eleanor & Park

Author: Rainbow Rowell

Release Date: February 1st 2013

Publisher: Orion Books

Age Group: Young Adult

Source: Bought

Goodreads | Amazon | The Book Depository

Eleanor is the new girl in town, and with her chaotic family life, her mismatched clothes and unruly red hair, she couldn't stick out more if she tried.

Park is the boy at the back of the bus. Black T-shirts, headphones, head in a book - he thinks he's made himself invisible. But not to Eleanor... never to Eleanor.

Slowly, steadily, through late-night conversations and an ever-growing stack of mix tapes, Eleanor and Park fall for each other. They fall in love the way you do the first time, when you're young, and you feel as if you have nothing and everything to lose.

Let me tell you now that I'm aware of how insufficient this review is, because even all the words in my vocabulary would fail to give justice to Eleanor & Park. It truly is a book that you have to know for yourself, so I suggest you do just that.

For me, three aspects of Eleanor & Park make it the gem that it is. First and second are, well, Eleanor and Park, the girl who couldn't help but be noticed and the boy who didn't want to be noticed. Even if I had little in common with them, with the way Rainbow Rowell wrote their story, I couldn't help but feel like the three of us were kindred spirits.

She never felt like she belonged anywhere, except for when she was lying on her bed, pretending to be somewhere else.

The third aspect is their romance. Eerily real, it is where the book really stands out. Watching two kids who never quite fit in anywhere, even at home, slowly opening up and learning the secret passageways and nooks and crannies in each other's existence gave me warm, fuzzy feels. 

When she got on the bus that morning, she immediately lifted her head to find Park. He was looking up too, like he was waiting for her.

But with their reality comes darkness, and thanks to that little snippet right before chapter one, the warm, fuzzy feels were constantly mixed with a sense of foreboding. 

I went into this book already knowing that the romance would be young and innocent, the writing heart-wrenching—I knew I'd love it, but I didn't know how much. This is one of those books that just sucked me right in, and I could have started and finished it in one sitting if only I didn't want to relish the way it made me feel for a while longer. Eleanor & Park was such an experience that it managed to both awaken the sleeping butterflies in my stomach and also bring on the waterworks, and it is definitely one of my top reads for this year—heck, make that for ever.

MY FAVORITE PART is the first time Park gave one of his comic books to Eleanor. I'm pretty sure I was grinning like a maniac when I read it at school lol.

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