Quarter 1 SSR Book Review

One of the novels I read in the first quarter of the school year was Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. This book is a young adult fiction set in 2011 in Nebraska. The story is about a girl named Cath and her twin sister Wren. Both twins are freshmen at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The book is mainly revolving around Cath. Cath is the total opposite of her sister Wren. Wren is all about the stereotypical college life: partying, drinking, and drugs. Cath, however, prefers to stay in her dorm room and read Simon Snow, which is equivalent to our Harry Potter. However there is a conflict occurring in her dorm room which is restricting her from reading her Simon Snow fan fiction. Cath's roommate Reagan and her friend Levi are causing some sticky situations. Another conflict in this book is that Cath is in a creative writing class and her professor hates the idea of fan fiction, which is all Cath writes. Her professor believes that fan fiction is plagiarism since it's essentially using another person's work. Another conflict would be her family. The twins' parents recently divorced and Wren is acting as if her mother never existed, while their dad is home alone. 

The main character, Cath, is a strong and independent character. Usually, with cliche love stories I am annoyed with the female protagonists because they all fit into the same stereotypical category as whiny and dependent. She stands up for what she believes in and doesn't care what other people think. I somewhat feel connected to Cath because she is nerdy, she fangirls about books, and she proves her point. The writing was simple, it was not hard to analyze which made it somewhat powerful. Most of the characters were dynamic and had much development through out the book. At the end of the story you could tell that the characters grew and matured. This defiently helped the story because without character development it would have been very bland. If I were to change one thing about the story I would ask the author to write from Wren's point of view. It would have been very interesting to see how the other twin felt about the different situations compared to Cath.