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?

I picked up this book for a reading challenge not knowing anything about it. I’m so glad that I did!

The story grabbed me from the very beginning and held my attention throughout the entire book. I listened to this on CD as I drove to/from an out-of-town meeting, and I found myself day dreaming about what might happen next. Maybe it’s because I was the shy girl in college who sat in my dorm room my first semester in college (so I completely related to Cather), or maybe it’s because Levi’s pretty much the sweetest guy in the whole word (so I completely understood why she fell for him). I really just liked these characters and their issues. I even liked that the book didn’t completely wrap up at the end (it’s a weird ending — I had to listen to it twice, but decided that I like it). In fact, the story stayed with me so long that I ended up buying the book and reading through it a couple of months later.

Personally, I’m not sure I’d classify it as YA. I tend to think of YA as anything I’d pass along to my 13 year-old niece. The language and themes in here were more R-rated than PG-13. Overall, though, I loved it. (Plenty of swearing; not gratuitous sex or violence)