Fangirl

Title: Fangirl

Author: Rainbow Rowell

Rating: 4.5 stars

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary

Number of Pages: 460

Publication Date: 2013

Publisher: Macmillan

Summary (from the back of the book): 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 would rather bury herself in the fanfiction she writes where there's romance far more intense than anything she's experienced in real life.

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

I absolutely adored this book. If you love living in books and have gone to university, you will really be able to relate to Cath's experiences. This book is very much a coming of age story; finding who you are and more importantly accepting who you are. On top of finding out who she is, Cath also faces the problem of dealing with her social anxiety. Something that I found Rainbow Rowell handled really well.

I found this book to be a fun, light read that is very realistic and for the most part couldn't find any faults with it. But at the same time I can't say I found anything overly amazing about it either. This book just was. Yet despite this I would recommend it to anyone. One of the reasons I personally think it lack the wow factor is that I do prefer fantasy to contemporary.

This probably explains why my favourite parts of the book were the events surrounding Cath writing her fanfiction and the inserts both from the fictional Simon Snow books and the fanfiction that Cath has written. And I must say, I am really interested in reading Carry On after reading the small snippets throughout the book.

This book is very dialogue based, which I personally love. I find that dialogue is what brings any story forward. It is one thing to be able to write and describe a story but to have characters that can talk and communicate between each other and effectively is what I love and more importantly, it's what I remember. Another thing about a good dialogue driven book, is that the things that aren't said have such a greater impact.

This book is one of the best stand alone's that I have read this year and I can't wait to read something else that has been written by Rainbow Rowell.