It would be really easy to judge this book by the title and assume it’s ‘just’ young adult fiction and doesn’t have a serious point. But although this might be young adult fiction, it showed that the only way to get through social-anxiety and other mental health problems is to open up to people and let them help you.

As you might tell from the title, Cath is a fangirl, introverted and in love with the Simon Snow fanfiction that she writes – she has thousands of followers online but not so many friends in real life.

And now she’s heading off to university and her close relationship/dependency on her twin sister Wren is on the rocks as Wren samples all the social activities that college has to offer.

With a surly roommate that she doesn’t talk to, and her roommate’s boyfriend who seems to hang around the room all the time, Cath doesn’t know how to cope.

So when her dad gets sick again and her mum tries to get back into her life after leaving when Cath and her sister were only little, it’s all too much for Cath and she just wants to go home.

But it turns out that help will come from the most unexpected places, and those people that she thought she could trust will betray her in ways she wouldn’t have imagined.

Can Cath cope without her sister? And can she start to let go of Simon Snow and the fan-fic world she has created to embrace the real world and make the most of her time at university? Seems like only time will tell…

I flew through this book in less than a day, I felt like I could relate to Cath on so many levels (apart from being able to write, definitely not that one). Not wanting to go out, preferring the world inside my room to the world outside, now that I can relate to.

The book was written in such a way that although it felt really fast-paced, I also felt like I was feeling every emotion along with Cath, from heartbreak to joy and back again. Great work by Rainbow Rowell – I’ve had this book on my shelf for so long, I wish I’d read it earlier!