Cather and Wren, twin sisters, are just starting college. While Wren falls right into classes, friends, and partying, Cath has a tougher time, mostly due to her social anxiety. The only thing she's completely comfortable doing is writing, particularly Simon Snow fanfic. But fanfiction can't fix her bipolar father, or her absentee mother, or Wren's binge drinking, or her attraction to her roommate's ex-boyfriend. And it certainly can't fix her Fiction Writing class, where her professor pushes her out of her fanfiction comfort zone and insists she create her own worlds. 
 One of these days, Rainbow Rowell is going to kill me with the ending of a book. As with Eleanor and Park, I was left at the end of Fangirl with a rising sense of "wait, what?! You can't stop there!" 
 Also as with Eleanor and Park I connected with the main character on a deep, personal level. In Eleanor and Park, Rowell captured poverty, the shame of living in poverty, and the emotional barriers one puts up to protect oneself from that shame. In Fangirl, she captures social anxiety and impostor syndrome, along with the obsessiveness that allows one to hide from situations that make one anxious. Although Cath struggles with a more severe level of social anxiety than I do, I still felt for her (and she kind of reminded me of me in my freshman year of college, especially with the fear of going to the dining area alone). 
 Rowell is a character writer; she sees people and renders them perfectly on page, flaws and all, making for a deeply satisfying reading experience. Endings notwithstanding.