If you haven't read Rainbow Rowell's books, or you've never heard of Rainbow Rowell, and you love some young adult books, you definitely need to pick of Eleanor & Park or Fangirl as soon as possible!
I read Eleanor & Park last summer, picking it up mostly because the cover was awesome and the names of the main characters were even better. It dove deeper into children with troubled childhoods more than I thought it would've. It was so touching, so sweet. There's nothing like young, awkward romance.
I just finished Fangirl, Rowell's newest release, and I literally could not put the book down. The story revolves around Cath, one half of a twin set, who is in her first year of college. She's the nerdier sister, the more awkward sister of the two. Her sister, Wren, is popular, starts to party as soon as she gets to the dorm and generally has more luck with boys.
That is, until Cath meets Levi, her roommate's boyfriend (or is he?). Levi is my favorite character in the book. He's funny. He's happy. He sounds like he has awesome hair. And he likes the awkward girl. That's even better! You watch for months as they interact, never going beyond the surface. The relationship pulls at you the entire time. You want them to get together so bad because they are just so dang cute together.
Throughout the book, Rowell has written snippets of this magical series called Simon Snow. It's a bit like a Harry Potter type of obsession for Cath and she writes fan fiction for it. You almost get two stories in one---Cath's story and Simon's story. For a nerd like me who loves Harry Potter, it was a perfect addition to an already great story. Though, I do have to say, some of the longer bits of the Simon Snow story did start to drag on.
In Fangirl, as in Eleanor & Park, the main character has a bit of a weird childhood. Her mom left when she was a child, on the September 11th to be exact, and her dad is a bit of a manic depressive. You have to watch as Cath deals with the issue of leaving her dad alone and living on her own in college. Though her twin sister attends the same college, they barely see each other, which is a new way of living for Cath.
All the while, Cath is discovering that maybe she isn't a writer like she thought she was. Maybe she only knows how to take someone else's world, Simon Snow's to be exact, and write about that.
Fangirl is a bit about discovering yourself, apart from what you've known for so long, and finding where you belong. What makes a story better than that?
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