Warning! There will be a lot of spoilers!
Many of us know Rainbow Rowell as the writer of a lot of emotional books that deal with things not addressed by too many authors. This makes her a well loved author by many since she is always successful in talking about issues and making them relatable. My favorite book of hers was Fangirl. Which is why I was so excited when I heard about Carry On, the true story of the world that Cath wrote fanfiction about. Baz and Simon are roommates at Watford School of Magicks and also nemeses. It's Simon's duty to take down the Insidious Humdrum, but he is a little occupied dealing with his roommate who he thinks is a vampire.
I loved Fangirl because it reminded me a lot about Harry Potter and how it has inspired so many in being fangirls or fanboys of their own and into writing their own fanfiction. It was understandable to me in this book on how she replaced Harry Potter with her own version of a magical world. However, I ended up thinking that maybe Rainbow Rowell took it a little too far with the writing of Carry On.
Before I get to the Harry Potter aspect, I want to talk about the characters. I loved it as I was reading it, I thought the different story lines were great and how the characters had good and bad aspects of them. I also really liked the relationship between Baz and Simon, at first. I think it's great that Simon was bisexual, but it was also a very abrupt transition. Simon hated Baz for years and never showed an ounce of affection or attraction to him, except for an obsession on if he's up to something evil. As soon as they get together I love their relationship, but I also feel like it may have been used as a plot device to appeal to people. I just thought it was extremely fanfiction like, when people ship characters together that aren't together in canon. This might just be me, but I didn't think they would be together, until they were if that makes sense. To try and explain this thought process more (sorry if I'm rambling), as soon as they did get together, I loved them and thought they were great. In my opinion their relationship from before didn't flow perfectly into their relationship after. I also didn't realize this until I started looking back. Despite this, I still think it's really important to have gay characters in books, especially as main characters. So that is one reason I enjoyed this book, but I just feel like it could have been done a little better to make more sense. Now onto how Rainbow Rowell used Harry Potter!
After I finished the book, I ended up thinking there was a line that might have been crossed. Harry Potter is sacred in the world of books, at least to me. It's hard to express my feelings on this, because I'm sure Rainbow Rowell meant no disrespect. However, I enjoyed her incorporation of Harry Potter in Fangirl, because it was more respectful in my opinion. Except now Carry On kind of completely rewrote it into an entire book this time. I also felt like this was more for the profit. After seeing how much people loved Fangirl and the references to Harry Potter as Simon Snow, she decides to write a book all about it. I know she says she and many others wanted to know what happened to Simon and Baz, but the book also ended up very anti-climatic in my opinion. Baz and Simon end up together, as hinted by Cath's fanfiction. Then, the Insidious Humdrum ended up barely even doing anything. Looking back on the book, I don't see much of a point of it. It was great while I was reading it, but now I don't feel much of anything for it. This kind of makes me sad because I enjoyed it a lot while I was reading it. However, Harry Potter is a million times better to me and this book could never in a million years replace it for me. And to me, I see it as an attempt to replace Harry Potter. It may be a stand alone, but why was it necessary for her to make this into an entire book? I would have been fine with it being kept in Fangirl. Now, it's a little ruined to me. It may not be intended to be disrespectful, but that's how I see it.
Many people will say that means all fanfiction is disrespectful then. I don't agree with that. I see this as fanfiction turned into a book purely for profit. At least with Fifty Shades of Grey, it was nearly unrecognizable as Twilight fanfiction. But I saw way too much of Harry Potter and not enough originality in Carry On.
Don't get me wrong, I love the lgbtq representation and I feel bad that I didn't like this book as much as I thought I would, but all I see the now is the book having no real point. I always feel bad when I don't like a book because I know authors put in a lot of effort into their books, which I have loads of respect for. I also know a lot of people will disagree with my review, but this is just my opinion on it. I won't hate on people for loving all the things I didn't like.
