Review: Grace and the Fever by Zan Romanoff

Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl meets Jenny Han’s The Summer I Turned Pretty in this contemporary YA about what it means to be a fan—and what it means to be a friend—when your whole world is in flux.

In middle school, everyone was a Fever Dream fan. Now, a few weeks after her high school graduation, Grace Thomas sometimes feels like the only one who never moved on. She can’t imagine what she’d do without the community of online fans that share her obsession. Or what her IRL friends would say if they ever found out about it.

Then, one summer night, the unthinkable happens: Grace meets her idol, Jes. What starts out as an elusive glimpse of Fever Dream’s world turns into an unlikely romance, and leads her to confront dark, complex truths about herself and the realities of stardom.

From the author of A Song to Take the World Apart, Grace and the Fever is a heart-clutching reminder of what it’s like to fall in love—whether it’s with a boy or a boy band—and how difficult it is to figure out who you are after you’ve fallen out of love again.

My Thoughts
Grace is your typical teenager if you consider how withdrawn she becomes to hide her secret of being a Fever Dream fan girl. She doesn't feel that her real friends will understand and will judge her for how absorbed she's become in this world she's created as Gigi. One night she decides to sneak out and she meets one of the boys from Fever Dream Jess and it changes everything for her. She becomes a celebrity by association and nothing but drama follows. She's now a pawn in a cover-up that could shake the Fever world and her own.

I like how Grace navigates this world because she comes to know who she is outside of the Fever Fandom. She discovers eventually that the group she idolizes are human and have faults along her journey to be more than Gigi. I never knew how intense these fandoms could be since I've never loved a group enough to obsess over what they do. This story gave me a good luck at how easy it is to loose yourself in their lives. This is a true coming of age story about a girl letting go of her love for a boy band and start living her life outside of Fever Dream. Overall, the writing and pace are steady. I think this is a good read for anyone that is looking for a contemporary book about a young woman and her love of music.


PRAISE
“A wise, bittersweet coming-of-age story for the thinking fangirl.” —Anna Breslaw, author of Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here

“A smart, warm, feminist ode to anyone who has ever been eighteen, made a mess of their own life, spent their late night hours on Tumblr, or loved a band so much it hurt.” —Katie Coyle, author of Vivian Apple at the End of the World

“A thrilling romp through a fangirl fantasy in which everything crashes and burns and the heroine emerges stronger.”—Kirkus

“Grace and the Fever reads a lot like how loving a boy band feels: you think it’s cute at first and then suddenly you find yourself so enthralled that you just need more and more and you hope your family isn’t too concerned because yep you are definitely obsessed. Super addictive.” —Goldy Moldavsky, New York Times bestselling author of Kill the Boy Band

Zan Romanoff fell in love with Hanson when she was ten and has been a boy-band fanatic and teen-idol obsessive ever since. She graduated from Yale in 2009 with a B.A. in Literature, and now lives and writes in Los Angeles. GRACE AND THE FEVER is her second novel. Visit her at zanromanoff.com or follow her on Twitter at @zanopticon.