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A review by booksanddoggo
Gena/Finn by Hannah Moskowitz, Kat Helgeson
4.0
Ok, I feel like I should maybe actually give this book a lower rating, but I can't take off my fangirl goggles and put objective criticism goggles on (if those are even a thing that exist). I would say, even though this is sort of spoilers territory: don't get your hopes up too much about the romance. I know, I know, you see it's tagged glbt, you see the title is Gena/Finn AND you see Finn is short for Stephanie and you're a fangirl and you know what that slash means, but...don't expect the happy ending you're thinking of. I can't believe I'm saying this, but: read the book anyway. If you liked Fangirl, if you liked The Fangirl's Guide to the Galaxy, if you liked Secret Loves of Geek Girls, you will like this. It's not perfect (epistolary novels, even modern mixed-media ones, always suffer from some awkwardness when the characters actually meet in real life, and the switch to journaling and poetry was mostly well-done and emotional but still felt a little stilted), and I'll admit I wanted the romance to go a slightly different way. But there is so much there that felt true, about fandom and mental illness and friendship and starting college/starting the real world, that I think it's definitely more good than bad. (Also I cried a lot. I know, surprise surprise).
I got an ARC from Netgalley and/but will 100% be picking up the real thing when it comes out. Mostly because the photographs of characters and the fanart was still all marked TK when I got my e-copy and I NEED to see them.
Edited to add: don't worry guys I got your back, I used my "in" with the publisher (lol that's a joke idk if they even read these things) to send this note in the "Add a note to the publisher" section on Netgalley: "My only note is...I'm not sure about listing this in stuff as LGBTQIA. I mean, it's hard to say, because I'm a fangirl AND a lesbian so I probably would have read it either way. I see why you might think you'd get to a bigger audience this way. Which might be true! But it does seem a tiny bit unfair to the LGBT YA audience to advertise this as such when it really isn't, and I can see people getting upset if they feel like there was false advertising. There are still plenty of fangirls who will read this even if it's not listed in lists of queer books, so you don't have to worry about that! This will definitely pull in the Rainbow Rowell, Sam Maggs, etc. crowd."
I got an ARC from Netgalley and/but will 100% be picking up the real thing when it comes out. Mostly because the photographs of characters and the fanart was still all marked TK when I got my e-copy and I NEED to see them.
Edited to add: don't worry guys I got your back, I used my "in" with the publisher (lol that's a joke idk if they even read these things) to send this note in the "Add a note to the publisher" section on Netgalley: "My only note is...I'm not sure about listing this in stuff as LGBTQIA. I mean, it's hard to say, because I'm a fangirl AND a lesbian so I probably would have read it either way. I see why you might think you'd get to a bigger audience this way. Which might be true! But it does seem a tiny bit unfair to the LGBT YA audience to advertise this as such when it really isn't, and I can see people getting upset if they feel like there was false advertising. There are still plenty of fangirls who will read this even if it's not listed in lists of queer books, so you don't have to worry about that! This will definitely pull in the Rainbow Rowell, Sam Maggs, etc. crowd."