What Makes You The Biggest Fangirl/Fanboy?

We're giving you the chance to win a copy of 'Landline', the new book by Rainbow Rowell, 2 weeks before its publication! Two runners up will win a goody bag from us with YA related awesomeness and Fangirl notebooks.

All you need to do to enter is write a paragraph about what makes you the biggest book fangirl/fanboy. You can include pictures of your book collections, the weird things you've had signed, the people you've met or the craziest thing you've done to meet your idols.

For example, my colleague Jane and I went to a talk with the author Deborah Harkness. I was so cool about it. I even wore my exclusive bookseller 'A Discovery of Witches' tshirt and sat on the front row. Jane and I asked loads of questions and then I got ALL my books signed (I have about every edition you can get in them including advance proofs). We've now been invited to the book launch of the final book in the trilogy so we're geeking all the way to London to meet her all over again! Oh, and we got to go out for a meal with Laini Taylor...

I'm sure you've all gone to much further lengths than meet to meet your idols. And if you haven't met anyone yet, don't worry, you can still enter. Tell us why you loved the book 'Fangirl' and Rainbow Rowell and we will post your entries too.

Send your entries to: yabirmingham@gmail.com. Competition ends on 20th June, and Landline is released on 3rd July.

Winners will be chosen at random and all entries will be available to read on the blog after the closing day, so make sure they're funny!

 

Don't forget our branch (Birmingham High Street) is also running an offer that you will get Landline for £10.99 (instead of £12.99) if you pre-order. You can do this any time up until the day before it is released. It is also the best way to make sure you can get it on the day.

 

You can read my review of Landline here, and Sofi's review of Fangirl here.

REVIEW: Landline - Rainbow Rowell

PAGES: 320
PUBLISHER: Orion
FORMAT: Hardback
BUY IT: Waterstones
RATING: 4 Stars

This review refers to an uncorrected advance copy, which is due to be published 03/07/14. Although this is one of Rainbow Rowell's adult novels, it is suitable for older teens.

SUMMARY

Georgie McCool knows her marriage is in trouble. That it's been in trouble for a long time. She still loves her husband, Neal, and he still loves her - but that almost seems besides the point now. Two days before they're supposed to visit Neal's family in Omaha for Christmas, Georgie tells him that she can't go. She's a TV writer, and something's come up on her show; she has to stay in Los Angeles. She knows that Neal will be upset with her - he is always a little upset with her - but she doesn't expect to him to pack up the kids and go home without her. When her husband and the kids leave for the airport, Georgie wonders if she's finally done it. If she's ruined everything. That night, Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past. It's not time travel, not exactly, but she feels like she's been given an opportunity to fix her marriage before it starts...Is that what she's supposed to do? Or would Georgie and Neal be better off if their marriage never happened?

REVIEW

Landline follows Georgie, an American sitcom writer with 2 kids and a husband, Neal. When Georgie lands the chance to write her dream series it means leaving Neal to take her children to his parents on his own. With their relationship already strained, the time without Neal makes Georgie start to look at their relationship and what he means to her.

One evening when Georgie stays with her mom she tries to call Neal from her old yellow landline - and when he answers it's not who she's expecting. Right guy, wrong time. She somehow manages to connect with him in a past state, just before he proposes to her. Georgie has to ask herself - should she try to put him off from proposing believing that she can't make him happy, or are they destined to be together no matter what?

Georgie is such an awesome character. She's not your typical skinny, pretty popular girl. She's kind of like Tina Fey (who happens to be my hero) and lounges around in Neal's old Metallica t-shirt, whilst forgetting to go to work. She has a really dry wit and sometimes is just plain hilarious. Although there is a technical love triangle between herself, Neal, and her best friend Seth, she never has eyes from anyone other than Neal. Nothing about their love is what you'd normally read in these books, it's so much more real. Rowell talks about how love is about compromise. It can never be perfect - no one is ever a perfect match - we're people, not jigsaw pieces. Rowell exposes love - she gives it room to grow without sugarcoating. 

It's a very dialogue-based book so you'll totally fly through it but it's so awesome. It's clever, witty and so truthful. Of course it has a heartwarming romance, but it feels so true to form. Georgie's soul searching allows us to watch them fall in love, question everything about their relationship and how love is supposed to feel, and in the end...? Well you're just going to have to wait and see for yourselves.

So what would you do or say if you could speak to a past version of your partner? Although it might not ring true for younger readers without much life experience, there's a lot of lessons to be learned and it's nice to see something that isn't a horribly overwrought Disney romance. 

Relationships aren't perfect. They're a compromise and something to be worked at all the time. But with love? Anything can work out.

You are all really going to love this.

- Bex.

GUEST REVIEW: Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell

PAGES: 480
PUBLISHER: Macmillan
FORMAT: Paperback
BUY IT: Waterstones
RATING: 5 Stars

SUMMARY

Cath and Wren are identical twins, and until recently they did absolutely everything together. Now they're off to university and Wren's decided she doesn't want to be one half of a pair any more - she wants to dance, meet boys, go to parties and let loose. It's not so easy for Cath. She's horribly shy and has always buried herself in the fan fiction she writes, where she always knows exactly what to say and can write a romance far more intense than anything she's experienced in real life. Without Wren Cath is completely on her own and totally outside her comfort zone. She's got a surly room-mate 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. Now Cath has to decide whether she's ready to open her heart to new people and new experiences, and she's realizing that there's more to learn about love than she ever thought possible...

REVIEW

People always see me reading books around school and a lot of people don’t know me that well, so to start a conversation they usually ask me what my favourite book is. In the past, I have never been able to answer it properly because I’ve never had a definite favourite, I love so many books and it’s hard to just choose one. Also this person would also judge me based on the book I say, so I always chose carefully. But ever since last September, the answer to this question was clear. Fangirl is my favourite book. Then of course, a lot of people who I talk to have never heard of the book so they ask why I like it so much. I still do not know how to answer this question, because there are many reasons as to why I love this book. I recently discovered that my goodreads review isn’t exactly great because I didn’t know what to write. So this is my first proper review as to why I love this book. I’ll try to make it as non-spoilery as possible but just to make sure only read on if you have read the book.

Rainbow Rowell has this way of writing which I absolutely love. Before reading Fangirl, I had read Eleanor and Park and that’s how I got excited about the release of Fangirl. Eleanor and Park was a great and lovely book that really hit me with the feels. What I loved about Eleanor and Park was that she made me feel like I could relate to the characters, despite being nothing like them. During Eleanor and Park, I felt a special connection to both characters and this made me excited for Fangirl. But this isn’t a review of Eleanor and Park, that shall be for another post.

Fangirl started off with a sentence that just captured me right away and after reading the first page I couldn’t put it down.

There was a boy in her room.

Now I understand that isn’t exactly the best opening sentence but what caught my attention was the way that Cath reacted. Going into this book, I had a feeling I would be able to relate to the main character somehow, but I didn’t think she would be almost an exact replica of me and that’s what I loved. My experience with fangirls, led me to believe that they aren’t generally like me. I’m used to encountering the sort of fangirls who scream and cry at everything to do with their fandom, which attracts attention. I’m the sort of girl who hides behind my books and prefers to go unnoticed. And that is exactly what Cath was like, as you could tell from her reaction to there being a boy in her room. She froze and panicked and went silent, which is exactly what I would do. This then got me interested in the book and I flew through the first few chapters quickly.