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Fangirl | March 23, 2016

by Rainbow Rowell (St. Martin's Press, Macmillan, September 2013)

I’ve always wondered why there isn’t more YA set in college. I know when I was a teenager, I spent a lot of time angsting about going to college, which lead me to read a lot of books set in boarding schools. However, they didn’t have the elements that can make college such a unique and defining period in one’s life: the freedom, upheaval, and isolation that can lead a person towards self-discovery, for better or for worse. Finally, in Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, YA gets the college story it deserves. 

Fangirl is the story of Cath, a college freshman struggling to live without the close comfort of her single dad and her twin sister. Cath, like many of us book nerds, finds escape in the world of a novel– Cath is an internet-famous author of fanfiction. I found Cath’s story to be poignant and hopeful, hitting all the emotional elements that can come into play when a person is thrust into an unfamiliar world, without the comforts and security of home.