Being excited about a book is the best feeling there is. Second to being in love of course.

Fangirl, by Rainbow Rowell, is about a girl who loves books. The Simon Snow books, in particular, about a boy who goes off to study at the Watford School of Magicks. (Sound familiar?)

Cath is studying fiction writing at university, but finds it easier to write Simon Snow fan fiction. In fact, she’s racing against the clock to complete her master work before the final Simon Snow book comes out. Too bad real life keeps getting in the way of her writing. After all, how can a girl concentrate when she’s fighting with her twin sister, worrying about her father’s mental health and falling in love with her roommate’s ex-boyfriend?

Fangirl is about how a book can take over your life. We can all relate to that. We’ve all been a fan of something, be it Harry Potter, Star Wars, comic books or even Game of Thrones. We take the What Character Are You quizzes, we go watch the movie adaptions, we dress up for Free Comic Book Day. It’s fun. It’s geeky. And it’s part of who we are.

There’s a lot I loved about this book. It’s funny, honest, and reminded me of all those late nights I spent following the discussion boards trying to predict how the last Harry Potter book was going to end.

It’s no secret that I’m a giant Harry Potter fan. In fact, at one point while I was reading this book I was actually wearing my Ministry of Magic t-shirt (as pictured). I never wrote fan fiction, but I did dabble in fan art. So yes, this book brought back a lot of those feels.

Fangirl is also about family. Cath’s relationship with her twin sister Wren isn’t perfect. Wren parties too hard, and when they get to university, their relationship unravels even further. Her Dad is losing himself to his job and her mother has waited far too long to join the party. Families aren’t perfect. And that’s where the honesty of this book comes in. Quite a few young adult books feature two-dimensional parents who play a passive role. Not so here. Fangirl shows us that nobody’s family is perfect. And that’s okay.

I really enjoyed this novel. I didn’t want to stop reading, but I didn’t want it to finish either, which are both good signs. If you’ve ever been a fangirl, then this is the book for you.

(Below is a recent meeting doodle I did of Ginny Weasley, which just proves that you can’t outgrow the fangirl bug once it’s bit)