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3.26 AVERAGE
3.26 AVERAGE
“I’ve always had a fandom. I’ve always had characters who live in my head and mess with my heart and tell me stories, and I love it.”
Gena and Finn is one of those books that I picked up because it's supposed to be about college and switching from Highschool to college, which is something that I've been looking for more. Don't get me wrong I still love my YA, but I want college books now too, ones that don't involve sex all the time.
This book did that, we get to see Gena go from a boarding school to a college setting where she struggles to cope with multiple things. We see her struggle to make ends meet and her parents being absent, all while she's in this fandom and is pretty well known in it. Then we have Finn who is a recent college graduate looking for a job, and trying to decide if she wants to be with her boyfriend forever or not. She is also in the same fandom as Gena but isn't as well known and Finn does some pretty nice fan art as well.
Gena and Finn are two unlikely characters who probably wouldn't have ever met if it hadn't been for fandom. With this fandom, they slowly become friends and start to tell each other everything. Things that they haven't ever told anyone else. We get to see them fall in a type of love, and friendship where the lines blur and your not really sure if they're a thing or not. Which makes things extremely complicated considering Finn has a boyfriend who wants to marry her.
Besides the romance part of this book, though we get to see a condition where Gena sees's things that aren't really there and even though she is on medicine for it, it has greatly made her question everything she see's because of that.
Overall I really liked this story. Not only was it a nice college-aged book that shows freshman year and what happens after graduating. It dealt with internet friendships and how fandoms can make some of the best bonds between people. It dealt with what happens when your alone and have no one really to talk to about things. Gena/Finn also deals with so much more.
If you want a college-aged book that shows the reality of and fandom as well, then this book is for you!
"You didn't get to choose what happened to you.
You don't get to choose if it still hurts you.
You get to choose if you put it in your sentence about yourself."
Gena and Finn is one of those books that I picked up because it's supposed to be about college and switching from Highschool to college, which is something that I've been looking for more. Don't get me wrong I still love my YA, but I want college books now too, ones that don't involve sex all the time.
This book did that, we get to see Gena go from a boarding school to a college setting where she struggles to cope with multiple things. We see her struggle to make ends meet and her parents being absent, all while she's in this fandom and is pretty well known in it. Then we have Finn who is a recent college graduate looking for a job, and trying to decide if she wants to be with her boyfriend forever or not. She is also in the same fandom as Gena but isn't as well known and Finn does some pretty nice fan art as well.
Gena and Finn are two unlikely characters who probably wouldn't have ever met if it hadn't been for fandom. With this fandom, they slowly become friends and start to tell each other everything. Things that they haven't ever told anyone else. We get to see them fall in a type of love, and friendship where the lines blur and your not really sure if they're a thing or not. Which makes things extremely complicated considering Finn has a boyfriend who wants to marry her.
Besides the romance part of this book, though we get to see a condition where Gena sees's things that aren't really there and even though she is on medicine for it, it has greatly made her question everything she see's because of that.
Overall I really liked this story. Not only was it a nice college-aged book that shows freshman year and what happens after graduating. It dealt with internet friendships and how fandoms can make some of the best bonds between people. It dealt with what happens when your alone and have no one really to talk to about things. Gena/Finn also deals with so much more.
If you want a college-aged book that shows the reality of and fandom as well, then this book is for you!
"You didn't get to choose what happened to you.
You don't get to choose if it still hurts you.
You get to choose if you put it in your sentence about yourself."
This was.... not what I expected at all. And not in a good way.
The first half or so went how I wanted to read a book about online friends and their relationships formed over fandom and how it affects their real lives. And then suddenly? I was reading a trauma story? Which by itself wouldn't be so bad. I liked the use of poems, I liked the representation of mental illnesses. But it did not work in a book like this.
The first half or so went how I wanted to read a book about online friends and their relationships formed over fandom and how it affects their real lives. And then suddenly? I was reading a trauma story? Which by itself wouldn't be so bad. I liked the use of poems, I liked the representation of mental illnesses. But it did not work in a book like this.
Spoiler
I was fine with Zack dying but then suddenly Gena was so broken and the whole story broke with it. It was not pleasing to read in the least. The conclusion was also kind of weak and, yes, trauma, PTSD, all of that is a long, long process. But in the fiction I'm reading, this was too real. Much too real. It left me with a bitter aftertaste and I don't like it.
2.5 stars.
I wanted to like this book. And the first 1/3 of it was pretty great. Lots of fandom stuff + Internet friendship. What could go wrong?
As it turns out, a lot, actually.
If someone had told me the ending of this book after I had read, say, the first three chapter, I would have thought they were joking. The change of tone from the beginning to the end is extreme, to put it mildly.
This book goes from a nice, happy contemporary to an EXTREMELY dark and emotional contemporary in the blink of an eye.
I guess that would be okay for some people, but it was definitely not my cup of tea.
I wanted to like this book. And the first 1/3 of it was pretty great. Lots of fandom stuff + Internet friendship. What could go wrong?
As it turns out, a lot, actually.
If someone had told me the ending of this book after I had read, say, the first three chapter, I would have thought they were joking. The change of tone from the beginning to the end is extreme, to put it mildly.
This book goes from a nice, happy contemporary to an EXTREMELY dark and emotional contemporary in the blink of an eye.
I guess that would be okay for some people, but it was definitely not my cup of tea.
(So I finished this book three days ago and then forgot to update my goodreads. WHY does this always happens to me, I have the memory of a goldfish. ANYWAY)
Gena / Finn was such a promising book, right from the start. I really enjoyed the unique formatting of this book: a story told through emails, blog posts and everything and found myself closer to the characters than I'd imagined I would be. I liked seeing the friendship between Gena and Finn grow, transform, I really liked and understood their closeness, the way they wanted to be / TALK to each other and everything.
However, the second part of the book kind of had me confused - I didn't expect these things to happen, I didn't expect the book to take such a different road from light read to heavy, dramatic read all of a sudden. Also, I felt like it ended a bit weirdly - I expected more of a conclusion there :/
Still a lovely read about fangirling, blogging, internet friends, tv shows and reality.
Gena / Finn was such a promising book, right from the start. I really enjoyed the unique formatting of this book: a story told through emails, blog posts and everything and found myself closer to the characters than I'd imagined I would be. I liked seeing the friendship between Gena and Finn grow, transform, I really liked and understood their closeness, the way they wanted to be / TALK to each other and everything.
However, the second part of the book kind of had me confused - I didn't expect these things to happen, I didn't expect the book to take such a different road from light read to heavy, dramatic read all of a sudden. Also, I felt like it ended a bit weirdly - I expected more of a conclusion there :/
Still a lovely read about fangirling, blogging, internet friends, tv shows and reality.
I liked this. The relationship between Gena and Finn was intense. I really loved their dynamic, and I loved the relationship that Finn and Gena also had with Charlie, Finn's long term boyfriend. I also liked the writing and formatting - such as texts, blog posts, emails etc. I enjoyed the fandom aspect, but not as much as I would have hoped but that is probably because I'm not massively involved in fandom anyway. Overall a good, enjoyable, and quick read.
I'm really torn about this book. The first half I loved; it got fandom right and told the story of a friendship between two women who meet via their shared love of a TV show.
But then the second half seemed like a fan fiction based on what had been established in the first half, and a really dark angsty one.
Perhaps this was intentional and was meant as a commentary on fan fiction tropes but if it was, then I can't figure out what the intended message was, other than "you should feel bad for liking hurt/comfort fic because you wouldn't like it if horrible things happened to you or people you care about."
I don't think that was what was intended, I think the author just wanted to work in elements she liked from fanfiction/felt that the story needed drama. But that was way, way too much drama.
But then the second half seemed like a fan fiction based on what had been established in the first half, and a really dark angsty one.
Perhaps this was intentional and was meant as a commentary on fan fiction tropes but if it was, then I can't figure out what the intended message was, other than "you should feel bad for liking hurt/comfort fic because you wouldn't like it if horrible things happened to you or people you care about."
I don't think that was what was intended, I think the author just wanted to work in elements she liked from fanfiction/felt that the story needed drama. But that was way, way too much drama.
This book started off so promising. The first half, wherein Gena and Finn are becoming friends and their friendship is unfolding, was super good. Gena and Finn both had distinct, likeable personalities, and their characterisation was excellent, which was important given that the story is told 'entirely' in texts, chats, and blog posts. That kind of formatting always takes a little while to get the hang of, as it can be difficult to distinguish what voice belongs to which character, but once I got a feel for that, I realised how successfully the two authors had managed to flesh out original identities for the characters that they very evidently care about very much.
This book is a love letter to fandom. In that sense, I am seperate from it in the same way I am seperate from Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, even though Fangirl is one of my favourite books: I am not involved in fandom, and I haven't been for at least five years. Yet despite this alienation, for the first two acts of Gena/Finn, I was completely taken in. I found myself obsessing over this book, thinking about it all the time, running the title over my tongue over and over every time I was unable to read it, because all I could think about was reading it as fast as was god damn possible. And I did, to a degree. I read the first two acts at top speed, and I loved them. I loved the friendship between Gena and Finn, I loved the seperate issues they both had and were dealing with, and I loved the complexity of the way in which they shared things with each other. For the first 180 pages, I was barrelling towards a four star rating.
And then they fell in love.
I obviously have no problem with f/f romance. I always thought I would be the last person alive to have a problem with a story ending up being gay, and yet: I wish this story hadn't ended up being gay, because the romantic storyline between Gena and Finn is where all of the problems I have with this book started to assemble. The thing I was most enjoying about this book, enjoying so much that I thought this book might actually become one of my favourites of the year, was the FRIENDSHIP between Gena and Finn. Female friendship that develops online? Bitch! I'm all about that! So when it became apparent that the two girls were falling in love, it just felt SO unnecessary to me, and their chemistry was so tortured and angsty and boring that I couldn't help but roll my eyes.
Yet it wasn't just my personal issues with the debatable necessity of the romance that made me dock at least a star. I also found it kind of awful that Finn fell in love with Gena while she already had a long-term boyfriend (Charlie, who she had been with for 4+ years), and yet she just stayed with him, stringing him along the entire time because she was too indecisive about her feelings for Gena and for Charlie to set the poor guy free. Finn asks Charlie if being in love with two people makes her an awful, selfish person. I don't think being in love with two people makes you awful and selfish, but I sure as hell think that treating your devoted, caring boyfriend, who lets you freeload off of him without complaint because you won't get your shit together, like shit is pretty fucking awful and selfish. I started off really liking Finn, and I initially enjoyed reading about her relative incompetence when it came to adulting, but the problem was that it was never resolved. She never grew up or got any better. Perhaps the authors were attempting some sort of realism here, but realism doesn't always make a good story.
On a cosmetic level, I really hated the writing style in the last 80-100 pages. The synopsis promised that this book would be told ENTIRELY in texts, chat threads, and blog posts, but then in the third act, it turned into Finn writing long, boring, moody journal entries addressed to Gena in which she broods about why her teenaged friend is so emotionally immature (Finn is 22 and Gena is 18), and Gena writing indecipherable poetry on random bits on scrap paper and on the bottom of everyone's shoes, for some reason, like she's the star of some quirky indie movie. Gag. Finn's writing style became so grandiose and vague towards the end that it was unclear what the hell was actually going on emotionally, and Gena's poems were gibberish. I get that poetry is allowed to be a little nebulous and/or off the wall, but it seems like Gena wasn't just being modest when she said that her poetry is bad. It really is just straight up bad.
Last thing (I think): the tragedy that happens to incite the action in the third act came out of NOWHERE. I actually liked some parts of how that tragedy ended up playing out, but I also feel like it completely derailed the tone of the story up until that point. I mean it when I say that the tragedy came out of literally nowhere. Like, we knew the characters were kind of reaching somewhat of a breaking point in their personal lives, but then this huge, tragic event happens, and it is so off-key and unexpected. I wouldn't have minded if it actually matched up to the rest of the book in tone, but it honestly read like the climax of an entirely different novel, which was just disarming. I wasn't reading this because I wanted to read something deep. I wanted something cute and fluffy and fun.
I started writing this review with the intention of giving this book three stars, and by the time I finished writing, I was so worked up about how much of a let-down the last act was that I ended up knocking another whole star off my rating. I was just so excited about where I thought this book was going, and then it didn't go that way, and I was left wanting something completely different to what I actually received. Very disappointed.
This book is a love letter to fandom. In that sense, I am seperate from it in the same way I am seperate from Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, even though Fangirl is one of my favourite books: I am not involved in fandom, and I haven't been for at least five years. Yet despite this alienation, for the first two acts of Gena/Finn, I was completely taken in. I found myself obsessing over this book, thinking about it all the time, running the title over my tongue over and over every time I was unable to read it, because all I could think about was reading it as fast as was god damn possible. And I did, to a degree. I read the first two acts at top speed, and I loved them. I loved the friendship between Gena and Finn, I loved the seperate issues they both had and were dealing with, and I loved the complexity of the way in which they shared things with each other. For the first 180 pages, I was barrelling towards a four star rating.
And then they fell in love.
I obviously have no problem with f/f romance. I always thought I would be the last person alive to have a problem with a story ending up being gay, and yet: I wish this story hadn't ended up being gay, because the romantic storyline between Gena and Finn is where all of the problems I have with this book started to assemble. The thing I was most enjoying about this book, enjoying so much that I thought this book might actually become one of my favourites of the year, was the FRIENDSHIP between Gena and Finn. Female friendship that develops online? Bitch! I'm all about that! So when it became apparent that the two girls were falling in love, it just felt SO unnecessary to me, and their chemistry was so tortured and angsty and boring that I couldn't help but roll my eyes.
Yet it wasn't just my personal issues with the debatable necessity of the romance that made me dock at least a star. I also found it kind of awful that Finn fell in love with Gena while she already had a long-term boyfriend (Charlie, who she had been with for 4+ years), and yet she just stayed with him, stringing him along the entire time because she was too indecisive about her feelings for Gena and for Charlie to set the poor guy free. Finn asks Charlie if being in love with two people makes her an awful, selfish person. I don't think being in love with two people makes you awful and selfish, but I sure as hell think that treating your devoted, caring boyfriend, who lets you freeload off of him without complaint because you won't get your shit together, like shit is pretty fucking awful and selfish. I started off really liking Finn, and I initially enjoyed reading about her relative incompetence when it came to adulting, but the problem was that it was never resolved. She never grew up or got any better. Perhaps the authors were attempting some sort of realism here, but realism doesn't always make a good story.
On a cosmetic level, I really hated the writing style in the last 80-100 pages. The synopsis promised that this book would be told ENTIRELY in texts, chat threads, and blog posts, but then in the third act, it turned into Finn writing long, boring, moody journal entries addressed to Gena in which she broods about why her teenaged friend is so emotionally immature (Finn is 22 and Gena is 18), and Gena writing indecipherable poetry on random bits on scrap paper and on the bottom of everyone's shoes, for some reason, like she's the star of some quirky indie movie. Gag. Finn's writing style became so grandiose and vague towards the end that it was unclear what the hell was actually going on emotionally, and Gena's poems were gibberish. I get that poetry is allowed to be a little nebulous and/or off the wall, but it seems like Gena wasn't just being modest when she said that her poetry is bad. It really is just straight up bad.
Last thing (I think): the tragedy that happens to incite the action in the third act came out of NOWHERE. I actually liked some parts of how that tragedy ended up playing out, but I also feel like it completely derailed the tone of the story up until that point. I mean it when I say that the tragedy came out of literally nowhere. Like, we knew the characters were kind of reaching somewhat of a breaking point in their personal lives, but then this huge, tragic event happens, and it is so off-key and unexpected. I wouldn't have minded if it actually matched up to the rest of the book in tone, but it honestly read like the climax of an entirely different novel, which was just disarming. I wasn't reading this because I wanted to read something deep. I wanted something cute and fluffy and fun.
I started writing this review with the intention of giving this book three stars, and by the time I finished writing, I was so worked up about how much of a let-down the last act was that I ended up knocking another whole star off my rating. I was just so excited about where I thought this book was going, and then it didn't go that way, and I was left wanting something completely different to what I actually received. Very disappointed.
I was really into this book until around page 150. That's when things just took a nosedive for me. I really liked how they addressed how messy life and love are. But I didn't care for how her state after the accident. I also don't appreciate how the end just dropped off. Overall, I still enjoyed the book; just didn't care for the end.
