Fangirl

by Rainbow Rowell

Summary from GoodReads

A coming-of-age tale of fan fiction, family and first love. 

Cath is a Simon Snow fan.

Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan...

But for Cath, being a fan is her life—and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.

Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.

Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.

Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate 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.

For Cath, the question is: Can she do this?

Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?

And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?

Thoughts on the Book

I read this book when it first came out when blogging was still just a vague idea in my head.  After reading Carry On I wasn't done with the world of Simon Snow, so I felt compelled to reread Fangirl, which fortunately my friend had gotten me for my birthday so I had a copy on hand.

My Review

The story is about a girl, Cath, who not only has to deal with leaving home and everything comfortable and known to start college, a world of unknowns, but also has to deal with the end of the Simon Snow series, which is practically her whole world.

I love this book.  I think it got better the second time I read it.  I love how messed up Cath and Wren are and how, even though they share the exact same DNA and were brought up in the exact same circumstances they deal with everything in drastically different ways.  Cath internalizes everything and locks it down and tries to avoid bringing anyone else into her life, Wren overcompensates with having fun and putting on a good front and blocking everything from actually meaning anything to her.

I love how much both Cath and Wren grew as characters.  When the book ended they were miles from where they started and were closer than ever.    For the other characters, I love Reagan.  She's probably my favorite character from the book, she's so  unforgivingly her own person, if you don't like her, that's your problem.  So much of Cath's growth is due to her, the best thing that could have happened to Cath was Reagan taking her under her wing, showing her that it's okay to be yourself.  Levi I didn't like too much, he's kind of a jerk.  Cath forgives him too easily, but after that he gets better, but I still wouldn't trust him.  But, given Levi and Nick, I'd go with Levi everytime.

My favorite part about the book (although it could be due to just reading Carry On) were the Simon Snow snippets, and the full short story that Cath read within the book.  I love the world of Simon Snow and I love that Rowell was stuck on it too and felt the need to write a story about them.  So great!

I give this one a 10/10.  I loved it when I first read it, and I love it even more years later for a reread.

The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet

by Katie Rorick and Rachel Kiley

Summary from GoodReads

Based on the Emmy Award­-winning “genius” (The Guardian) web series, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, this is a new novel starring Lizzie’s spunky sister Lydia as she navigates the joys and pitfalls of becoming an adult in the digital age.

Before her older sister, Lizzie, started her wildly popular vlog, Lydia was just a normal twenty-year-old plotting the many ways she could get away with skipping her community college classes and finding the perfect fake ID. She may not have had much direction, but she loved her family and had plenty of fun. Then Lizzie’s vlog turned the Bennet sisters into Internet sensations, and Lydia basked in the attention as people watched, debated, tweeted, tumblr’d, and blogged about her life. But not all attention is good…

After her ex-boyfriend, George Wickham took advantage of Lydia’s newfound web-fame, betrayed her trust, and destroyed her online reputation, she’s no longer a naïve, carefree girl. Now, Lydia must work to win back her family’s trust and respect and find her place in a far more judgmental world.

Told in Lydia’s distinctive, eccentric, and endearing voice, The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet picks up right where The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet left off and “offers a fresh take on Pride and Prejudice without ruining it” (The Washington Post, on The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet). Featuring fresh twists, wonderful new characters, and scores of hilarious texts, doodles, and tweets, The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet takes you behind the webcam and into the lives of your favorite sisters in a way that’s sure to satisfy existing fans and delight new ones.

Thoughts on the Book

I'm a huge fan of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, so getting this was a no-brainer.  Lydia was always my least favorite character (Wickham and Caroline notwithstanding) but I love the world and I will never say no to more from it.

My Review

This book follows Lydia's story after Lizzie moves to San Francisco.  It's all about Lydia figuring herself out and getting back to a new normal after the Wickham drama.

I absolutely loved this story.  It was everything I wished that The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet was.  Lydia's voice shines through and she's as funny as ever!  I loved being able to see deeper into Lydia, to see more than her superficial party girl persona.  She's extremely intelligent and intuitive and it was wonderful to watch her begin to see that in herself.

So many characters came back, mainly Mary, but Jane was in it a bit, as sweet as ever, and Bing!  I love Bing.  I love how he dealt with Lydia too, by bringing her to where he worked and letting her figure things out for herself and helping unobtrusively.  I also loved Lydia's New York friends, they were so great and really helped her come into her own.  I would so love to go to a party like she went to!  Pretty much any Disney themed party I would love to go to...

There were only two minor things I didn't like about the book.  It needed more Darcy.  We got lots of Lizzie, but Darcy was never with her, I really want to see them interact now that they're together!  The other thing was Mary's story.  It was so...predictable?  It's such a trope.

I give this a 10/10 because it was totes adorbs, duh!  But seriously, it was everything I could have wanted in a LBD story.

Waving Backwards

by V.L. Brunskill

Summary from GoodReads

Imagine not knowing who you are, until you find yourself in a statue 800 miles from home.

Join intensely passionate and fiercely independent New York college student Lara Bonavito on an unforgettable journey of self-discovery in sigh-worthy Savannah, Georgia. Adopted into an abusive and impoverished home, Lara’s quest to find her roots lands her in the southern jewel’s historic district. A vivid cast of characters help her unravel clues found in a cryptic letter hidden in the family bible for two decades.

“The baby’s roots are with the southern lady who waves forever.”

With the help of mischievously handsome trolley tour guide Robert Taylor; Kipling-quoting florist Abel Bloom; and comically outspoken Louisiana beauty, Susan Fletcher, Lara uncovers family secrets wrapped in the mystique of Savannah’s Waving Girl statue.

Waving Backwards is a coming-of-age quest that reveals the healing power of family bonds, and maternal love

Thoughts on the Book

I received this book from NetGalley.  It's been sitting on my Netgalley bookshelf for a while, but I finally got around to reading it.  I requested this book because it sounds really cool.  A girl receiving a cryptic letter which leads her to search for her biological family.  The cover looks pretty awesome too!

My Review

This book is about an adopted girl, Lara, who finds a letter in the family bible which prompts her to want delay college for a second year while she goes off hunting down her biological family, who made it known they didn't want to be contacted with the agency.  Lara "figures out" that the letter references Savannah, Georgia and she heads down south to find her family.

I can't get over the stupidity of this story.  It was excruciating to read.  The first two chapters were written in past tense then it just switched to present tense.  Then there's these awful random flashbacks which are also in past tense.  The tense, and the pointless date at the beginning of each chapter, is the only indicator that there's a flashback.  No book should be written in present tense.  The actual writing is awful too, some chapters are 2 pages, barely, if they're that short they shouldn't even be a chapter.  Here's an example of the prose: "Whirring past cars in a haze of haphazard thinking and driving, Lara reflects on the letter, pulling it repeatedly from the passenger seat to review the words as questions squawk in her head.  What if her family owned slaves?  Will she find a bunch of bigoted old folks who look down their noses at her? Will they like her?  Will there be brothers or sisters?"..."Questions and possibilities make it impossible to focus. Other drivers fly past, waving aggravated hands as she swerves to grab the letter."  That's about a quarter of chapter 4, by the way.  It's SO DUMB.  She's swerving around the lanes grabbing for a letter that's 5 lines long?  Her first question about her bio-family is if they owned slaves?  Then there's the fact that she's from a poor family in New York City, where'd she get the car from?  And how does she know how to drive?

The story seems to progress by Lara making random assumptions and weird decisions.  For example, she finds a "letter" in the family bible, automatically assumes it's about her since she's an only child (and no other children could have possibly been born - ever), then assumes it means the east coast of the US, and she had to look up the oldest cities in each southern east coast state, and randomly decided that Savannah had to be the city in question.  She gets this all from the line "Buried in the first city is a man who holds the 9th key".  If it were me, I'd immediately think the first city was Roanoke (the first British colony, founded in 1585), but since the colony didn't last a year, Jamestown would be my second guess (founded in 1607) both in Virginia.  Or if you want to go technical and say the first settlement/city that has been continuously inhabited in the Continental US it would be St. Augustine, Florida (founded in 1565).  Or, if you want to say the oldest (aka first) city of the United States it would be Lewes Delaware (founded in 1631) since that's the first city in the first state to sign the Constitution.  Savannah (founded in 1733) is so far down on the list of 'first cities' it's ridiculous.

At one point in the book there's a tornado.  In Savannah.  A tornado.  And these are normal there...check out this.  Yep, that's right, about 6 tornadoes in Savanna (12 if you expand your radius by quite a bit) since 1950.  This is because Savannah does not get tornadoes, they get this other storm quite often...I think it's called a hurricane.  Yeah, they get those a lot.  They get more waterspouts than tornadoes for crying out loud.  And supposedly the author lives in Savannah.  Give me a break.

The ending of the book was as dumb and boring as the rest of the book.  There's these stages in books that they're supposed to follow, Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, and Resolution.  There was none of that.  Barely an exposition, no rising action (unless you consider Lara making up answers to the "riddle" as a rising action), no climax so there was no falling action, and of course no resolution.  Just "whelp, found out what I wanted, now I'm going home to not go to college since I wasted all my loan money in the search for my bio-parents".  Never-mind what she actually found out and how it impacted her (that would have been the climax had it been written correctly).  She just got the answer of how she was conceived and by whom then called it a day.

I give this a 0.5/10.  It was truly awful and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.  Unless you really do enjoy a mediocre plot that is written like a 6th grader would write.  But I think that could be an insult to 6th graders.

The Unfortunate Decisions of Dahlia Moss

by Max Wirestone

Summary from Good Reads

For fans of The Guild, New Girl, Scott Pilgrim, Big Bang Theory, Veronica Mars, or anyone who has ever geeked out about something.


The odds of Dahlia successfully navigating adulthood are 3,720 to 1. But never tell her the odds.

Meet Dahlia Moss, the reigning queen of unfortunate decision-making in the St. Louis area. Unemployed broke, and on her last bowl of ramen, she's not living her best life. But that's all about to change.

Before Dahlia can make her life any messier on her own she's offered a job. A job that she's woefully under-qualified for. A job that will lead her to a murder, an MMORPG, and possibly a fella (or two?).

Turns out unfortunate decisions abound, and she's just the girl to deal with them

Thoughts on the Book

I received this book from Netgalley.  Based off of the first line of the summary I knew I would love it.  Veronica Mars is my favorite TV series (I totally kick-started the movie) I love Big Bang Theory and New Girl, and I'm pretty much Ramona from Scott Pilgrim (trust me, cabinet full of tea varieties, I have it).  After reading that first line I knew two things for sure - I needed to read this book, and I really should watch The Guild.

My Review

This book is about a perpetually unemployed girl, Dahlia, who gets hired to find a digital weapon and gets sucked into solving a murder.

I loved this book!  It was so much fun!  Dahlia is a little crazy/neurotic and her roommate, Charice is totally bonkers.  It worked with the story though.  Everything was a bit on the crazy side, so when Charice allowed for a production of Godspell to happn in their apartment so Dahlia had to leave to go hang out with a murder suspect she thought was cute it just fit perfectly within the story.

Probably my favorite thing was all of the geeky references dropped throughout the book.  Most I got, but there were a couple that went over my head.  Two of my favorite geeky lines were:

"I put on my sexiest clothes, then, worrying that I had overshot the mark, opted for my Jigglypuff cap. It was cold, and Jiggly helped send the message I wanted to send, which was apparently that I would like Nathan to fall asleep so that I could write on his face. (This is a hardcore Pokémon reference and if you do not get it, I apologize. If you do get it, I apologize even more deeply.)"

and

“Ever read one of those old private-eye mysteries where the detective gets double-crossed?”
“I suppose.” said Nathan. “I’m really more of a sci-fi guy.”
“But you knew all of those noir words!”
“Google,” said Nathan.
“Well, it’s a thing. Sam Spade is in his office, or wherever, and some dame with great legs comes in and asks him to find her sister.”
“Did Jonah have nice legs?” interrupted Nathan.
“He had nice pants, but let me finish. The dick takes the case, and when he finds the sister, he discovers she’s dead, gets framed, and besides which it wasn’t the dame’s sister anyway.”
“And the great legs were prosthetic,” added Nathan.
“Exactly,” I told him.
“There never was a dame, she was a hologram.”
“Yes, you’re moving into sci-fi.”
“The sister was a Cylon.”
“Now you’re just being derivative.”

One character, Kurt, was described as a snorlax, how awesome is that?  Then there was the bit with viola jokes (I play violin, my best friend plays viola, so I've always enjoyed sharing the more awful viola jokes with her).  

The flirting between Nathan and Dahlia was great too, I especially loved her iPod password at the end and Nathan's reaction to it.  If I continue listing all the funniest parts of the book, I'll end up just posting the entire book, out of order, so I'm going to stop now and say - go read this book! It's so awesome and if you have a geeky bone in your body, you'll love it!

I give this a 10/10.  Such a fun read.  I really look forward to seeing what Max Wirestone comes out with next!