This is one of those books that’s I’m going to gush shamelessly about. I loved it. I loved it from the moment it started to the moment it ended. I loved the actual story, and I loved all the pieces of Simon Snow that are in the book. I loved the main character and everyone else. I LOVED THIS BOOK!
This book tells the story of a year in the life of Cath, a wanna be author and loner in her first year of college. she spends a ton of her time either thinking about the fictional characters from the Simon Snow series, or writing fanfiction about them. She doesn’t party and she doesn’t even really like to leave her room. Change a couple minor details here and Rowell has written my first year of college. I was Cath, I was home alone in the dorms on Friday nights when everyone else went out partying. I was checking my view counts for my fanfiction.
And yes, that’s why I loved this book, because to me it rang as totally true. The characters were realistic and the way they interacted felt so true as to be almost painful. I wanted this story to go on forever. I wanted to read all 8 Simon Snow books as well as Cath’s fanfiction about it. I think that was what really got to me, how invested I was in those characters, even though they are only around in short bursts. After this I want to read everything by Rowell and I might just have to read this book again at some point. It was perfect. It wasn’t really a coming of age novel, but it also sort of was. It was about Cath finding her place in the world without anything major ever happening, just like how most people find their place. Little things happen and we muddle through until suddenly we realize we know what we are doing and we are comfortable with it.
Five stars, my only complaint was that it ended.