About fifty pages into Fangirl, I already had to take a breather. I went on Twitter, where my "fans" hang out, and wrote, "this book is already hitting too close to home." And then, "I'm glad I didn't write fic in college, because Cath would've been me." 
 It's easy to escape into the "fangirl" territory of an online persona, where having a shred of writing talent makes you a star. But for Cath, at the height of her fic-writing popularity, she goes away to college. She's so not into this college thing, though, because why make friends with a bunch of annoying, drunk college kids when she's perfectly happy writing Simon Snow fanfiction? 
 This book is a delight. These characters are beautifully fleshed out, and their interactions are real. The bitchy roommate and her too-cute boyfriend? The classically handsome boy in Writing class? These are real people, and any college-aged, introverted, would-be writer knows it (don't look at me). 
 While Cath undergoes her own freshman-year growth, her fangirl persona lingers. She has trouble writing for her Fiction class, because she'd rather write her magnus opus fanfic. And on top of that, there's college. There's her twin sister, who's living "the college experience." There's her bipolar dad. There are boys. And you can only escape into fanfic for so long before you're forced to face all of that, whether willingly or not.