Forgive me if you already know this! So, it's a YA book about a girl in Nebraska going off to her freshman year of college, growing apart from her twin sister, navigating loneliness and social anxiety, doing well in classes but trying to fill the social and emotional voids by posting chapters of her popular Harry Potter Simon Snow fanfic, making a few good friends somewhat despite herself, worrying about her bipolar dad who is now living alone, struggling with whether she wants to or can be a traditional fiction writer as opposed to [/in addition to; it's a professor in the story who sets them in opposition] a fanfic author, and being obtuse about a couple of boys in her life, although thankfully not to a preposterous extent.
I didn't really know anything about the plot other than that it involved a fanfic writer. I ended up having no problems with Rowell's depiction of the practice or her explanations of its personal benefits, probably because, as she says in her author's note, she is an avid fic reader.
And even though I'm ~15 years out of college, the story took me right back there in a sympathetic way. I wasn't exactly like Cath in a number of ways, but a lot of her characterization still sounded terribly familiar. And it wasn't only through identification that the story worked for me; there were several passages that made me cry, for example, that had to do with maternal abandonment, not a thing I've personally experienced; and I loved Rowell's depiction of a girl keeping herself tightly leashed around a crush lest she betray her feelings or find herself unable to stop touching him once she started.
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Forgive me if you already know this! So, it's a YA book about a girl in Nebraska going off to her freshman year of college, growing apart from her twin sister, navigating loneliness and social anxiety, doing well in classes but trying to fill the social and emotional voids by posting chapters of her popular
Harry PotterSimon Snow fanfic, making a few good friends somewhat despite herself, worrying about her bipolar dad who is now living alone, struggling with whether she wants to or can be a traditional fiction writer as opposed to [/in addition to; it's a professor in the story who sets them in opposition] a fanfic author, and being obtuse about a couple of boys in her life, although thankfully not to a preposterous extent.I didn't really know anything about the plot other than that it involved a fanfic writer. I ended up having no problems with Rowell's depiction of the practice or her explanations of its personal benefits, probably because, as she says in her author's note, she is an avid fic reader.
And even though I'm ~15 years out of college, the story took me right back there in a sympathetic way. I wasn't exactly like Cath in a number of ways, but a lot of her characterization still sounded terribly familiar. And it wasn't only through identification that the story worked for me; there were several passages that made me cry, for example, that had to do with maternal abandonment, not a thing I've personally experienced; and I loved Rowell's depiction of a girl keeping herself tightly leashed around a crush lest she betray her feelings or find herself unable to stop touching him once she started.