Earlier this month, I read Fangirl, a Rainbow Rowell novel in which the protagonist is majorly into the (fictional) Simon Snow series, which is a Harry-Potter-esque series featuring a magical Chosen One and a magical world at a moment of crisis. Carry On is not the fanfic novel that Fangirl‘s protagonist is writing, but it is a Simon Snow book—Rainbow Rowell’s Simon Snow book. Or, as the flap copy puts it: “Carry On is a ghost story, a love story, and a mystery. It has just as much kissing and talking as you’d expect from a Rainbow Rowell story—but far, far more monsters.”
So, right: it’s Simon Snow’s last year at the Watford School of Magicks, and there’s a lot going on. Despite having been told, since the age of eleven, that he’s the Chosen One, he isn’t the most skilled magician around—just the most powerful one, and that power can be dangerous. Meanwhile his roommate Baz, who’s been a constant, if antagonistic, presence in Simon’s school life, isn’t back at school. Does Baz’s absence have to do with the possible civil war that might be about to split the magical world? And what’s to be done about the Insidious Humdrum, a mysterious force or creature that has been creating magical “dead spots” for years? And oh, how about the way that the last time Simon saw Baz, Baz was holding hands with Simon’s girlfriend, Agatha? Simon has to sort all this out and then some.
I liked the narrative style of this book, in which different chapters/sections are told from the point of view of different characters, including more minor characters. But the problem, I think, is that Rainbow Rowell is better at love stories than she is at ghost stories or mysteries. Or maybe the problem isn’t that, exactly: maybe the problem is that I read Rainbow Rowell books for the love stories, for the kissing and talking, specifically for the talking that comes before or after the kissing, the talking that involves the same characters who are doing the kissing: she’s really good at writing relationship stuff. And for the first half of this book, there wasn’t much of that, and it sometimes felt a bit slow. (Also, if you’ve read Fangirl, you know which characters are going to be kissing, and I just wanted them to hurry up and get there.) But I carried on (sorry/not sorry), and once the promised kissing arrived I was delighted, and continued to be pretty delighted for the whole second half of the book, so much so that I chose finishing this book over taking a nap on a day when I maybe really could have used the nap.
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