Book Review – Fangirl

by Rainbow Rowell (Macmillan) ISBN: 9781447263227

Cath and Wren are identical twins. They live in Omaha, Nebraska, with their father. Their mother left them when they were eight-years-old.

Now they’re off to university and Wren, the more outgoing of the pair, has decided that she wants to live in a twin-free zone for a while. She cuts off her hair and tells Cath that she will not be sharing a room with her. Wren wants to meet boys, go to parties, get drunk and have fun. Cath, who is terribly shy and spends her life writing fanfiction, is devastated, but she settles in. She slowly makes friends with her surly roommate, Reagan, falls in love with the lovely Levi, impresses her Fiction Writing professor, and is betrayed by her charming co-writer, Nick.

There is a mid-novel crisis with their father, the reappearance of their mother, and the eventual working out of differences between the twins.

This is a lovely book about leaving home, growing up, and finding first love. I must admit though, that I was terribly bored by the on-going inserts of fanfiction that Cath writes throughout the book, and skipped it entirely. I wish Rowell had left it out completely.