Fangirl in YAholics Anonymous!

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Fangirl

Rainbow Rowell

Start date: January 1, 2014

Finish date: January 30, 2014

Discussion: Group Read

Why we're reading this: Contemporary Group Read
[close] Contemporary Group Read

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What Members Thought

Jan 26, 2014 铀辞辞办苍别谤诲蝉飞颈蹿迟铀� rated it it was amazing

5 stars plus. OMG. Cath and Levi are too perfect okay?

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Sep 14, 2013 Renuka rated it really liked it

Shelves: reviewed, young-adult, romance, realistic, chick-lit, e-book, owned, contemporary, fav-couples, couple-covers

Rating: 3.5/5

Hmm, I just don't understand why this was so praised. It was good but it was far from fantastic or life changing. It was just cute. I also thought it was really quirky, funny, and original鈥ut at times it was too鈥oring? Not exactly, but it wasn't very enthralling.

The plot was centered a lot on "finding oneself" and character development. Which is great, especially as Cath is painfully shy and very focused on books. She's not outgoing and has trouble without her twin. It was really Rating: 3.5/5

Hmm, I just don't understand why this was so praised. It was good but it was far from fantastic or life changing. It was just cute. I also thought it was really quirky, funny, and original鈥ut at times it was too鈥oring? Not exactly, but it wasn't very enthralling.

The plot was centered a lot on "finding oneself" and character development. Which is great, especially as Cath is painfully shy and very focused on books. She's not outgoing and has trouble without her twin. It was really great to see how Cath begins to mature throughout the book, and make friends on her own. On top of that she has to cope with her sister going crazy, her poor depressed father alone at home, and her own abandonment issues by her mother.

I really think the most interesting parts had to do with her father suffering from the breakdowns and her broken relationship with her mother. The family background was deep and definitely had a huge impact on Cath emotionally. Seeing Cath overcoming that and go out into the world was the best part of the book.

Other than that鈥evi was cute, but there wasn鈥檛 enough for me. I didn't fall in love with him, he was friendly and cute. Typical love interest style stuff. Wren I didn鈥檛 like, I don't know if the reader was supposed to like her by the end, but she was very annoying and made terrible life choices. I liked Reagan a lot, she was so sarcastic, and she turned out to be a really loyal friend. I think she was a fantastic side-character that I would have liked to see even more of. Bu in general, I didn't really connect with the characters too well. They seemed distant at times. Cath herself was again relatable but sometimes she got annoying. She was constantly pushing herself down, and I disliked how she refused to do the writing project simply because she was so hung up on fan-fiction. Meh.

The fan-fiction parts were also good, but I didn't really get the full point of them. I enjoyed them, but they seemed extraneous. The end was unmemorable, I didn't really feel impacted. It was a solid book, but it didn't blow me away like I was expecting. I didn't fangirl over this or feel absolutely required to keep flipping pages as I read it, but I did like it. I am pleased that this was a stand-alone book because it was great as a simple story to read. ...more

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Mar 21, 2013 Cassie rated it really liked it

Shelves: own

So I finally managed to download this to my kindle and read it!

Not quite as good or emotional as Eleanor & Park, but VERY GOOD!

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Feb 23, 2014 Christine Manzari rated it really liked it

4.5 stars
I think in some ways, I was Cather. It was like reliving parts of my freshman year at college. I really enjoyed how Fangirl bought the intensity of the Harry Potter fandom (aka Simon Snow fandom) into the story and showed how the love of a book series can mean so much to lovers of the written word. The writing was fantastic and I had a hard time putting the book down. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of Rowell's books because I think they'll all be quirky and unexpected and as lo ...more

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May 01, 2013 Megan (The Book Babe) rated it liked it

Shelves: received-for-review, reviewed-on-my-site, waiting-on-wednesday-picks

Due to copy and paste, formatting has been lost.

I really expected to love Fangirl. I liked it, but I feel like it didn't resonate with me as deeply as it could have.

I really liked Cath as a character, but I just couldn't relate to the fandom. I did relate to almost everything else about her, though. Nerdy, socially retarded, and not leaving her room ever...that's me completely. She was so weird that it was endearing. I really liked that about her-- I liked her hesitance towards new situation

Due to copy and paste, formatting has been lost.

I really expected to love Fangirl. I liked it, but I feel like it didn't resonate with me as deeply as it could have.

I really liked Cath as a character, but I just couldn't relate to the fandom. I did relate to almost everything else about her, though. Nerdy, socially retarded, and not leaving her room ever...that's me completely. She was so weird that it was endearing. I really liked that about her-- I liked her hesitance towards new situations, and just really enjoyed her as a character.

But as much as I liked Cath, I feel like the secondary characters lacked a bit. I enjoyed Levi and Reagan, but I don't feel like I really got to know them throughout the book. I mean, I can't even tell you where Reagan worked, and she does work somewhere. We get to see Levi a lot more, but I can tell you very little about him too-- it's like we got a quick school on them, and it didn't ever go any deeper than that. I can't very well tell you some of the most basic things about them.

Going past that though, I did enjoy Cath and Levi's relationship. They were very cute together, and they balanced each other out pretty well. I loved the scenes between them-- I don't think they could have been any cuter. It actually reminds me of a John Green quote, which is crazy.

"I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly at first, then all at once."

I liked that the situations seemed very realistic-- I could imagine them all happening, which was great. But back to the fandom-- I loved how it was like this alternate of Harry Potter-- it made it so much easier to believe, because you could compare it to the HP fandom, and it all made sense.

The only thing that really disappointed me to speak up was the ending-- I feel like not everything was resolved. We kind of end up with an open type ending, which isn't really my thing, you know?

All in all, Fangirl was a good read, and I'm not disappointed, but I feel like it could have been better. I don't know why. ...more

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