Fangirl

Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell

DESCRIPTION

Cath and Wren are identical twins, and until recently they did absolutely everything together. Now they're off to university and Wren's decided she doesn't want to be one half of a pair any more - she wants to dance, meet boys, go to parties and let loose. It's not so easy for Cath. She's horribly shy and has always buried herself in the fan fiction she writes, where she always knows exactly what to say and can write a romance far more intense than anything she's experienced in real life.

Without Wren, Cath is completely on her own and totally outside her comfort zone. She's got a surly room-mate 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.

Now Cath has to decide whether she's ready to open her heart to new people and new experiences, and she's realizing that there's more to learn about love than she ever thought possible.

REVIEW

That amazing bright cover on the shelf of my favorite bookstore called me insistently and as often happens, Antonella answers the call.

I’m definitely in love with this novel, so sweet, so real.

So mine.

Over 400 pages read with red eyes, in a day and a half (and is very short time considering that I have a full time job and a family to feed and that English is not my native language).

I took the book with me in every corner of the house and I couldn’t put it down until was over, almost in tears because I have read it too fast.

I’m mad. I know.

Because this is the effect that BOOKS have on you when you let yourself trapped between their pages.

This little jewel came after few not really interesting reading and thanks Rainbow Rowell to wrote it, it’s simply perfect. Although we’re speaking of a Young Adult, I can tell that this novel is perfect at every age.

It’s impossible not to love Cath, this insecure girl, introverted and extremely sensitive, that "hiding" herself behind writing fan fiction, where she can manage to be herself and to talk to her inner voice through the characters.

Underneath this veneer of slightly crazy and mildly socially retarded, I'm a complete disaster.

Cath is delicious, to the outside may look fragile and even nerd, but she's a lot more. Cath can be any girl of eighteen struggling with a family a bit special, but real, dealing with changes, like the new university life far from home and far from her twin sister, Wren, who has decided to break away from the "twin’s role" to have a "single life".

Cath suffers, but she doesn’t give up becoming melodramatic or pitiful, her personality is fascinating and in many passages I found so many similarities with her that I loved her more and more.

Cath can be all of us, words lovers and bookworm.

Cath can be me too, although I have a lot of years more than her.

And how couldn’t Cath attract Levi, this simple and realistic guy, always smiling, polite and well-mannered, nice (as it never hurts), but sensitive, he sees beyond the surface and gradually succeeds to win a piece of Cath’s heart.

“Are you rooting for me?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… I spent four months trying to kiss you and the last six weeks trying to figure out how I managed to fuck everything up. All I want now is to make it right, to make you see how sorry I am and why you should give me another chance. And I just want to know… are you rooting for me? Are you hoping I pull this off?”

“I'm rooting for you.”

Levi, you are too young for me, but you moved me so much, your tenderness, your kindness, your fear to dare too much, your gesture. And your smile always present… I’ve imagined it before my eyes throughout the reading.

He reached his fingers back and hooked them inside the cuff of her sweater. "But you still want to give me a chance, right? Not just me, this? Us?"

"Yeah," Cath said, like she was giving in. 

"Good." He tugged on her sleeve and smiled down at their not-quite-touching hands. "It's okay if you're crazy," he said softly.

"You don't even know..."

"I don't have to know," he said, "I'm rooting for you."

I think that we can also love very good guy, you know? It’s too simple fall in love for bad guys, ruined, jerk and six packs, that maybe at the last 20 pages became lovely boyfriends. I’m almost sick of this kind of character. I want to read more good guy, more love with no hot sex and more real feelings, that growing up page after page, and not in the first 10.

Here characters are absolutely realistic, fascinating, never forced, with real dialogues. I adored all of them (I like family stories), also who at first sight can seems not positive or not very friendly, because all of them have their role and their space that match with the entire story. 

“I like your glasses” he said. “I like your Simon Snow T-shirts. I like that you don’t smile at everyone, because then, when you smile at me… Cather.” He kissed her mouth. “look at me.”

She did.

“I choose you over everyone.”

Rowell’s writing is like a breath, like freshness, like a caress. Over 400 pages without missing a beat, without ever dropping the attention.

Rainbow Rowell describes an ordinary story but original, she does not need frills, needs no great dramas and needs no foul language or ostentatious to describe what happens and above all, brings to light a pure and special feeling which comes little by little and that becomes something strong and essential: love. Simple, intense and very platonic, but comes to and touch every single inch of you.

I just can say that Fangirl is one of the best book read in 2015 and that Rainbow Rowell is one of the best author at the moment. Nobody can’t deny it.

So, five stars and more.

Many thanks Rainbow Rowell, you made me happy.