Read full review and enter to win a hardcover of Fangirl on my blog, YA RomanticsI adored this book. It's a quirky, touching story and I think a lot of book lovers will really connect with Cath and her struggle to find her own voice and place in the world.Cath and Wren are not only identical twins, they've also had to band together survive their mother's abandonment and cope with their father's manic depression. After their mother left, they discovered Simon Snow, a character in an uber-popular series of children's fantasy books. The two began to write Simon fanfic -- stories set in the story world of the books and featuring the same characters -- and became pretty well known in the Simon Snow fandom. Now they're headed to college. Wren is dying to spread her wings and fly solo (sorry -- couldn't resist!) while Cath is sort of panicked by all that college entails -- new people, a new place, and a new writing teacher.Yes, Cath is older than the typical sixteen year-old YA heroine, bordering on New Adult age. And yet, Cath faces some classic YA issues. Not only is she leaving home for the first time, her twin also requests a separation of sorts when she tells Cath that she doesn't want to be roommates. So Cath gets paired up with Reagan, a cranky upperclassman with a boyfriend who's always hanging around their room. Which makes it difficult for Cath, who wants to hide in her room, eating energy bars and falling back into her comfort zone -- the imaginary world of Simon Snow.Simon Snow will probably feel familiar (*cough*Harry Potter *cough*) to most readers. But Cath puts her own twist on things in her fanfic. I've never actually read any fanfic, but I can completely empathize with the desire to keep living in a fictional world that you adore, to keep imagining stories for beloved characters that seem almost like real people. At the same time, it seemed to me that fanfic was used as a metaphor for Cath's conflict. She can choose to stay in the safe, familiar cocoon of Simon Snow's imaginary world, or she can break out and experience the real world, which is a far scarier place, and begin to write her own original story.Part of Cath's inching toward independence is meeting new people. Given her mother's abandonment and the fact that she always had Wren as a security blanket, Cath is definitely not the friendliest, most trusting person. Her roommate, Reagan, is hilariously snarky, and I loved the way that I thought Fangirl used the relationship between Reagan and Cath to mirror the uneasy relationship between Simon and his roommate Baz. It was fun to watch these pairs of roommates figure each other out.I also loved the romance. I don't want to say too much, because part of the pleasure of the romance in this book is that you're not really sure who (if anyone) Cath is going to pair up with. Let's just say that some of the characters really surprised me. Reading Fangirl was a complete pleasure. I felt the same way about Cath as she felt about Simon Snow -- I really didn't want her story to end!Thanks to St Martin's for providing me with an e-galley of Fangirl!
