Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Fan Girl by Marla Miniano [REVIEW]

TITLE: Fan Girl
AUTHOR: Marla Miniano
PUBLISHER: Summit Books
PUB DATE: 2011
Summary from Goodreads:

"As a fan girl, do you:

A. Stalk your celebrity crush online and have a secret stash of his merchandise?
B. Believe that when he is singing onstage, he is singing to you—and only you?
C. Willingly agree to do anything he asks?
D. Leave your life behind and follow him to the ends of the earth?

For Summer, being the ultimate fan means doing all four. When the insanely good-looking half-Filipino frontman of hot local band Violet Reaction, Scott Carlton, singles her out, Summer knows her life is finally going to be spectacular. Only it doesn't turn out that way. Scott leaves and becomes a huge star in the US, and where does that leave Summer? (Hint: check out letter D). Intrigued yet?

From the author of Table For Two comes another gut-wrenching story tale of romance and growing up. Follow Summer's adventures in love and celebrity-stalking as she makes a choice most of us can only dream of by grabbing a copy of Fan Girl by Marla Miniano."

Rating:

When the idea got into my head to pick up Fan Girl and give it a try, I was thinking this was going to be a story where this girl who is an incredibly obsessive fan of a guy celebrity or something would be traveling everywhere he goes in the hopes of being noticed and finally be loved by this guy. Not exactly what happened but my thoughts were close enough.

Fan Girl introduces readers to Summer, a girl who was so used to blending in and going about her day without anything out of the ordinary. Then comes Scott Carlton, the half-Filipino frontman of a hot local band. Summer cannot believe that she manages to catch the attention of such a hot guy. Ah, life couldn’t be anything but great… or so she thought. Opportunity knocks on Scott’s door and he snags a record label in the US, and Summer is determined to be with Scott no matter what…

I’m not sure what I think about Summer. She’s the typical protagonist, meek and uninteresting. The “I have no idea that I’m pretty” or whatever is kind of getting old, but there are times that she reminds me so much of myself when I was younger, or as I like to call it – my dark days. LOL. Although, I’ve never been as delusional as her but still…

You see, when Summer got involved with Scott and she had the idea that, as she said it: “With guys like Scott – you took what you could get, and you didn’t complain,” at some point in my life, I did this. She went blind in hopes that things will get better with a rock star – I thought the same thing a while back when I dated a jock. Thinking with all the busy schedule the guy is going through, I didn’t want to be a burden, I didn’t want to stress him out with my wants and demands, what’s worse is that I never did clarify if we were official or not. So yeah, I was dirt and he was a jerk. And yeah, he cheated, just the same. But that’s a long story so I’ll leave it at that.

I guess the significance of Summer just made me understand her – even though I wanted to slap some sense into her over her decisions, I get how blinded she was. I’m not saying it’s right (in fact it was very, very wrong) but I get it.

Even though it is true that Summer is to be blamed for all that she went through, I don’t believe that it’s entirely her fault. Scott should not have led her on to begin with. A guy like Scott would know that this girl would be expecting, would have hopes of something, and obviously has feeling for him, but he chose to keep mum about it, and I think that alone is enough to say that he took advantage of this girl’s weakness. I just don’t agree with the fact that he got away unscarred (not literally… okay, maybe I want to hurt him a little. Okay… maybe a lot!). Things aren’t all that black and white; I just wish I’d seen this guy get a fall out at some point... Do I sound vengeful?

Anyway, Fan Girl isn’t really something I haven’t seen before, but I had fun reading it. There are lessons in love that you can learn from Summer so that’s a good thing too.