FANGIRL
Genre: YA/NA
Author: Rainbow Rowell
Release Date: September 10, 2013
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Eleanor & Park.
A coming-of-age tale of fan fiction, family and first love.
Cath is a Simon Snow fan.
Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan…
But for Cath, being a fan is her life—and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.
Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.
Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.
Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words… And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.
For Cath, the question is: Can she do this?
Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?
And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?
All the Stars in the Universe….Just All of Them….Just. Life-changing book perfection.
Disclaimer: This is going to be a gushing, my-heart-is-bursting review.
This is more than a cute love story, although it is one of the most adorable books I’ve ever read. This book is for every young writer. I’m not even a writer, and I get it! As a reader, I’ve always been fascinated with the writing process, even though that process is probably different for every writer. This is a story in between the story, in between the pages. There is literally another book in this book. Levi laughed, and Cath felt it on her neck. Baz laughed, and Simon felt it on his eyelashes. And it’s absolute genius. Thank you, Rainbow Rowell, for this book.
My Levi & Cath:
”I’d give you the moon right now,” she said.
Levi’s eyes flashed happily, and he hitched up an eyebrow. “Yeah, but would you slay it for me?”
Cath (Cather) is a writer, mostly of fanfiction. There is a magical series that she and her sister have loved since they were kids. In order to keep the characters alive (in the fashion that fanfiction does), she started writing additional stories using the same characters from the Simon Snow books on the internet. I think there is a stigma to fanfiction in that it is a juvenile and immature, and fanfiction is the exact opposite. It brings life to writing. And I love that Rainbow Rowell addresses all of these and more in this book.
Cath is starting college, wanting to be a writer. She is already huge in the fanfiction world, but she is excited about expanding her writing world. She faces many new relationships and situations, like new college students do. Of course, it doesn’t help that she has social anxiety and is a writing hermit. At one point, she literally has no idea where to find the dining hall and refuses to try to find it (Bwahahaha!). There is so much of ME in Cather!!! There were so many moments in this book when I just stopped and had to breathe because they writing would actually take my breath from me. I could feel myself in this book and in these characters.
Cath & Levi. I loved these two so much. Levi is Cath’s roommate’s ex-boyfriend, but he hangs out in Cath’s room a lot because he needs help from her roommate to study. He has issues with reading and comprehension, so he usually listens to the lectures. The bond between Cath & Levi will have every reader swooning to no end. Cath ends up reading to Levi, and the cuddling…….THE CUDDLING!!!!! Gah! The AWKWARD. The CHARM. The entire LAUNDRY BASKET SCENE.
…pressing her face up under his jaw. “I just like you so much here.”
“I just like you so much,” he said, his head falling back against the couch. “Even more than that, you know?”
“And here,” she said, pushing her nose up against his ear. Levi’s earlobes were attached to his head. Which made Cath think of Punnett squares. And Mendel. And made her try to pull his earlobe away with her teeth. “You’re really good here,” she said. He brought his shoulders up, like it tickled.
“C’mer, c’mere,” he said, pulling at her waist. She was sitting just beside him, and he seemed to want her in his lap.
“I’m heavy,” she said.
“Good.”
I love love love all of Levi’s ten thousand smiles. I can’t even handle them! He’s just so infectious! And I can feel him seeping out of the book onto me! Levi has easily become one of my favorites ever. The fact that he’s blonde and he’s not a jerk to her is a shock because I usually cling to his opposite personality in books. I loved that Levi was always into her, always there for her.
This book brought out my fascination for writers. Many people have asked me why I don’t write books since I read so much. Honestly, I have never understood this question. In my head, they are completely different and not related. And my simple answer is that I would be a terrible writer. I have a horrible vocabulary. My brain operates too logically and not creatively enough. Some of my favorite writers have talked about how they have these people talking to them in their heads, and they have to get them out, so they bring them to life on the page. THIS is FASCINATING to me. And I just…..I want to live in their brains. This book is fanfiction brought to life. Fanfiction is this generation’s new way of writing and reading, and this author made it known in this book. I’ve never read fanfiction, but I’ve known about it ever since I became a true reader 8 years ago (I know, only 8 years?! I was wasting my reading on education. Pft!). The Harry Potter parallels killed me. I loved all of the references. I really believe this book is a piece of literature, and the Rainbow Rowell brought this literature to the surface of a young adult romance.
Sometimes writing is running downhill, your fingers jerking behind you on the keyboard the way your legs do when they can’t quite keep up with gravity.
Cath fell and fell, leaving a trail of messy words and bad similes behind her. Sometimes her chin was trembling. Sometimes she wiped her eyes on her sweater……
She closed the laptop before the door opened – and the sight of him smiling made her eyes burn right down to her throat.
This book will be on my bookshelf FOR….E….VER. I am a fangirl of Fangirl.
Going into this book, I didn’t realize that Rainbow wrote a book for Simon & Baz! I cannot WAIT to read their story in Carry On!
PUNK 57
We were perfect together. Until we met.”
Ever since I read 
Misha is a grade A asshole in the beginning and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love every page of it. Douglas has this gift for writing some of the sexiest alphaholes I’ve ever read. Yes, they’re mean and you want to slap them at times, but you also understand what drives them to be that way and you can’t help but love them anyway.
This is so much more than a sexy NA romance, however. It’s a story of learning to love and accept yourself. A story of learning to stand up for what you believe is right even if no one stands up with you. It’s a story of friendship and love. It’s an emotional rollercoaster that you never want to get off of and a romance between two people that don’t make sense together on paper but couldn’t be more right for each other. It’s dark and light, it’s love and hate. It’s complete and utter perfection.
TONIC
Joel (aka Hairy) is a tattoo artist….a hairy tattoo artist. He owns the tattoo shop, Tonic, which is getting its own reality tv show. He isn’t excited about it, but he realizes he would rather be the show on tv than the competition to get the show. When he first meets Annika…..FIRE! I LOVED the animosity between the two right away. Annika tries to give him the cold, but his fire is so hot that she cannot resist him. I’ll take a little bit of THIS and THAT. 
Staci has been a lot of things up to this point in her life — a graphic designer, an entrepreneur, a seamstress, a clothing and handbag designer, a waitress. Can’t forget that. She’s also been a mom, with three little girls who are sure to grow up to break a number of hearts. She’s been a wife, though she’s certainly not the cleanest, or the best cook. She’s also super, duper fun at a party, especially if she’s been drinking whiskey.
BLACK SWAN AFFAIR
It’s official. I’m ruined. Utterly and totally ruined by this incredible book, by these beautiful words, by the heart wrenching story, by the devastating angst…this…EVERYTHING.
Yep. That about sums it up.
Have you ever read a romance where you didn’t know which man to root for? Where your feelings were so up and down you felt like you were in a never ending spiral? Where you spend the entire time glued to the pages, utterly incapable of tearing yourself away for even a mere second? Because I just did.
Mesmerizing, maddening, heart rendering; this book owned me to the depths of my dark soul. I devoured every page, I screamed, I cried, I raged. I was enraptured.
Thief of Hearts
I haven’t read an L.H. Cosway book in waaaay too long. And I haven’t read all of her books. But I love every single one that I’ve read so far. What I love about L.H. Cosway is her ability to make me feel all the feels without telling me how to feel (Did you get that?). Her words and dialogue evoke such emotion and I get the feels from them. I usually don’t like student-teacher tropes but I went into this blind, and because I will read anything LH Cosway writes, I ended up loving it (duh!)! It’s not your typical student-teacher story.
Andrea teaches adult students. Stu recently got out of prison and is sentenced to attend the adult class. He is the typical bad boy, and I fell SO HARD for Stu. He’s got a dirty mouth. Cosway has a way with dirty words probably because she’s British and dirty words just sound so much more cool and natural in a British accent. Lol. Stu is tall, dark, wears sunglasses, and he smokes! Gah, I love a smoker! (only in books. Haha). Stu PURSUES Andrea…relentlessly, and I loved every second. And he can be sweet as pie! He’s pretty much my perfect man….
There is insta-attraction, and these two are so 
I LOVED Andrea’s dedication to teaching and wanting to see her students succeed. It defined her character so well. Being a teacher myself, I definitely related to Andrea in that way. I loved that it was a continuing theme in the book…education. Even after Stu and Andrea started their thing, Andrea didn’t stop wanting Stu to continue his education. She has the ability to see students’ strengths even if they aren’t the typical types of intelligence. My nerdy teacher side was like “Yes!” through this whole theme in the book. I love that Cosway even HAS themes in her books. What romance author has themes these days?! LOL!
L.H. Cosway lives in Dublin, Ireland. Her inspiration to write comes from music. Her favourite things in life include writing stories, vintage clothing, dark cabaret music, food, musical comedy, and of course, books. She thinks that imperfect people are the most interesting kind. They tell the best stories. L.H. is represented by Louise Fury at The Bent Agency.
CARESSED BY ICE
DOWN SHIFT
See that pile of goo right there?
Goo I tells ya!
That’s it! Stick a fork in me, I’m done! I am a pile of dead and melted goo, all at the hands of a broody, silent, former Marine turned firefighter. I would like my headstone to read that my ultimate demise came from the hottest BILF I’ve ever read, and I regret nothing. NOTHING.
I am head over ovaries in love with this series. I’d set my house on fire just to get my very own Wyatt Fox to come over and put out my fire…uhem.
SPARKING THE FIRE
DO YOU WANT TO START A SCANDAL
