Reanne's Reviews > Fangirl

You'd think this is a book I'd love, that I'm the perfect audience for this book (or would be if I were a little younger). I've always been a stay-at-home rather than go-to-parties person. I've been to college and lived in a dorm. I went through a long phase of reading and writing Harry Potter fanfic. But I think all of those things actually hurt my enjoyment of this book rather than helped it.

As a homebody, I can tell you that if you resolutely refuse to leave your room/house, people aren't going to barge in and drag you into a social life. A boyfriend is not going to relentlessly insinuate himself into your life. It just doesn't happen that way. Even if you have a roommate, it's unlikely that they'll care enough about your social life to try to make sure you have one. So I found this aspect of the story highly unrealistic. And since this is supposed to be "realistic" fiction, that bothered me.

Also, like most fanfic writers, I keep that aspect of myself to myself among people I know in real life. I might casually mention that I write or have written fanfic if a conversation with someone I know and like fairly well happens to go in that direction, and two or three of my closest family/friends have actually read some of my fanfic. But mostly, people just don't care. Most people think fanfic is weird and adult-rated romances involving very un-canon pairings are also creepy, sometimes very much so. I'm no BNF like Cath but I've had a lot of readers who've enjoyed some of my fanfic, and I've never just coincidentally run into any of them in real life (at least, not that I'm aware of). And the idea of Cath's boyfriend being as into her fanfic as he is strikes me as so unlikely it's sheer fantasy, particularly because like 98% of fanfic writers/readers are female. The openness that Cath had about her love of this fandom and this ship kind of annoyed me. Someone that openly obsessed, someone who took their obsession that seriously, would probably annoy me in real life.

And I hated that there was a Harry Potter reference. I can buy Simon Snow as a replacement for Harry Potter in this world, but I can't buy that there are two so obviously similar series that are both huge, worldwide phenomena at the same time in the same universe. Just no.

Other things bothered me, too. Like the persistent idea throughout the book that growing up means being okay with things like drinking, smoking, and casual sex as long as those things aren't taken to life-threatening extremes. A whole lot of people don't do those things well into adulthood--their whole lives, even--and they're not any less "grown-up" for it. It bothers me when a character's friends seem to be pressuring her into these things, especially when she's so clearly not comfortable with them, especially when they're pressuring her because of a "we're adults now and that's what adults do" mindset.

Also, like at least one other reviewer said, Cath doesn't really take a lot of action. She's a passive protagonist. Things happen, and she reacts to them. And that's kind of boring to read. More realistic, maybe, but boring. In books, characters should do things.

There are things I liked about this book, though. I thought there were a lot of very amusing lines, particularly in the dialogue. One reviewer said that the dialogue read like something you'd read in a book rather than something someone would actually say. I can see her point, but I think it's okay. Part of the fun of reading a book is reading fun dialogue that maybe isn't exactly true to the way people talk. So I did like that aspect.

I also liked the drama surrounding Cath's relationship with her family. This is one aspect that I could relate to her the least, since my family is so different from hers, but I think I liked it best. Her relationship with her dad is so heartwarming, especially when you find out that he's kind of damaged and really does need her help sometimes, even though he was also the one taking care of her for a long time. I was happy when Cath finally made up with her sister. The stuff with her mom was kinda sad, but believable, and I could totally understand why she handled it the way she did.

I liked that the male love interest was described in a way that wasn't perfect, model, gorgeous, but the main character found him attractive anyway. There are way too many physically perfect men in fiction. It's hard to picture perfect, and it's hard to imagine actually getting that kind of guy unless you're perfect and gorgeous yourself (and very few of us are). (Although there were many things about Levi's personality that made him completely unappealing to me on that level. See the above references to smoking, drinking, and casual sex.)

Ultimately, I was disappointed in this book. It kept me reading, but it disappointed me in several ways, and it didn't give me anything to really latch onto to love or remember.