What it’s about (from Goodreads):

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. 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?

Our thoughts:

I was never big on fanfiction, so it took me a little while to get into Cath’s world, but once I was there I was totally engrossed. Cath is quirky, slightly-awkward and totally relatable main character. There were so many times my first year of college when I thought and felt the same things she did.

 The story, for me, came in waves. There were lulls between the action that I didn’t always love, but for some reason it made the story more believable. Doesn’t everything always happen at once? And then there’s two weeks of nothing to do?

The book deals with some heavy, unpleasant topics but it never feels heavy or unpleasant. It’s a hopeful, optimistic story.

We would recommend this to:

Fans of Eleanor & Park, fans of young adult, people who like coming-of-age stories, people who love a good love story and anyone who has ever considered themselves a fangirl.