Scan barcode
A review by sarahtribble
Gena/Finn by Kat Helgeson, Hannah Moskowitz
2.0
This book started off so promising. The first half, wherein Gena and Finn are becoming friends and their friendship is unfolding, was super good. Gena and Finn both had distinct, likeable personalities, and their characterisation was excellent, which was important given that the story is told 'entirely' in texts, chats, and blog posts. That kind of formatting always takes a little while to get the hang of, as it can be difficult to distinguish what voice belongs to which character, but once I got a feel for that, I realised how successfully the two authors had managed to flesh out original identities for the characters that they very evidently care about very much.
This book is a love letter to fandom. In that sense, I am seperate from it in the same way I am seperate from Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, even though Fangirl is one of my favourite books: I am not involved in fandom, and I haven't been for at least five years. Yet despite this alienation, for the first two acts of Gena/Finn, I was completely taken in. I found myself obsessing over this book, thinking about it all the time, running the title over my tongue over and over every time I was unable to read it, because all I could think about was reading it as fast as was god damn possible. And I did, to a degree. I read the first two acts at top speed, and I loved them. I loved the friendship between Gena and Finn, I loved the seperate issues they both had and were dealing with, and I loved the complexity of the way in which they shared things with each other. For the first 180 pages, I was barrelling towards a four star rating.
And then they fell in love.
I obviously have no problem with f/f romance. I always thought I would be the last person alive to have a problem with a story ending up being gay, and yet: I wish this story hadn't ended up being gay, because the romantic storyline between Gena and Finn is where all of the problems I have with this book started to assemble. The thing I was most enjoying about this book, enjoying so much that I thought this book might actually become one of my favourites of the year, was the FRIENDSHIP between Gena and Finn. Female friendship that develops online? Bitch! I'm all about that! So when it became apparent that the two girls were falling in love, it just felt SO unnecessary to me, and their chemistry was so tortured and angsty and boring that I couldn't help but roll my eyes.
Yet it wasn't just my personal issues with the debatable necessity of the romance that made me dock at least a star. I also found it kind of awful that Finn fell in love with Gena while she already had a long-term boyfriend (Charlie, who she had been with for 4+ years), and yet she just stayed with him, stringing him along the entire time because she was too indecisive about her feelings for Gena and for Charlie to set the poor guy free. Finn asks Charlie if being in love with two people makes her an awful, selfish person. I don't think being in love with two people makes you awful and selfish, but I sure as hell think that treating your devoted, caring boyfriend, who lets you freeload off of him without complaint because you won't get your shit together, like shit is pretty fucking awful and selfish. I started off really liking Finn, and I initially enjoyed reading about her relative incompetence when it came to adulting, but the problem was that it was never resolved. She never grew up or got any better. Perhaps the authors were attempting some sort of realism here, but realism doesn't always make a good story.
On a cosmetic level, I really hated the writing style in the last 80-100 pages. The synopsis promised that this book would be told ENTIRELY in texts, chat threads, and blog posts, but then in the third act, it turned into Finn writing long, boring, moody journal entries addressed to Gena in which she broods about why her teenaged friend is so emotionally immature (Finn is 22 and Gena is 18), and Gena writing indecipherable poetry on random bits on scrap paper and on the bottom of everyone's shoes, for some reason, like she's the star of some quirky indie movie. Gag. Finn's writing style became so grandiose and vague towards the end that it was unclear what the hell was actually going on emotionally, and Gena's poems were gibberish. I get that poetry is allowed to be a little nebulous and/or off the wall, but it seems like Gena wasn't just being modest when she said that her poetry is bad. It really is just straight up bad.
Last thing (I think): the tragedy that happens to incite the action in the third act came out of NOWHERE. I actually liked some parts of how that tragedy ended up playing out, but I also feel like it completely derailed the tone of the story up until that point. I mean it when I say that the tragedy came out of literally nowhere. Like, we knew the characters were kind of reaching somewhat of a breaking point in their personal lives, but then this huge, tragic event happens, and it is so off-key and unexpected. I wouldn't have minded if it actually matched up to the rest of the book in tone, but it honestly read like the climax of an entirely different novel, which was just disarming. I wasn't reading this because I wanted to read something deep. I wanted something cute and fluffy and fun.
I started writing this review with the intention of giving this book three stars, and by the time I finished writing, I was so worked up about how much of a let-down the last act was that I ended up knocking another whole star off my rating. I was just so excited about where I thought this book was going, and then it didn't go that way, and I was left wanting something completely different to what I actually received. Very disappointed.
This book is a love letter to fandom. In that sense, I am seperate from it in the same way I am seperate from Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, even though Fangirl is one of my favourite books: I am not involved in fandom, and I haven't been for at least five years. Yet despite this alienation, for the first two acts of Gena/Finn, I was completely taken in. I found myself obsessing over this book, thinking about it all the time, running the title over my tongue over and over every time I was unable to read it, because all I could think about was reading it as fast as was god damn possible. And I did, to a degree. I read the first two acts at top speed, and I loved them. I loved the friendship between Gena and Finn, I loved the seperate issues they both had and were dealing with, and I loved the complexity of the way in which they shared things with each other. For the first 180 pages, I was barrelling towards a four star rating.
And then they fell in love.
I obviously have no problem with f/f romance. I always thought I would be the last person alive to have a problem with a story ending up being gay, and yet: I wish this story hadn't ended up being gay, because the romantic storyline between Gena and Finn is where all of the problems I have with this book started to assemble. The thing I was most enjoying about this book, enjoying so much that I thought this book might actually become one of my favourites of the year, was the FRIENDSHIP between Gena and Finn. Female friendship that develops online? Bitch! I'm all about that! So when it became apparent that the two girls were falling in love, it just felt SO unnecessary to me, and their chemistry was so tortured and angsty and boring that I couldn't help but roll my eyes.
Yet it wasn't just my personal issues with the debatable necessity of the romance that made me dock at least a star. I also found it kind of awful that Finn fell in love with Gena while she already had a long-term boyfriend (Charlie, who she had been with for 4+ years), and yet she just stayed with him, stringing him along the entire time because she was too indecisive about her feelings for Gena and for Charlie to set the poor guy free. Finn asks Charlie if being in love with two people makes her an awful, selfish person. I don't think being in love with two people makes you awful and selfish, but I sure as hell think that treating your devoted, caring boyfriend, who lets you freeload off of him without complaint because you won't get your shit together, like shit is pretty fucking awful and selfish. I started off really liking Finn, and I initially enjoyed reading about her relative incompetence when it came to adulting, but the problem was that it was never resolved. She never grew up or got any better. Perhaps the authors were attempting some sort of realism here, but realism doesn't always make a good story.
On a cosmetic level, I really hated the writing style in the last 80-100 pages. The synopsis promised that this book would be told ENTIRELY in texts, chat threads, and blog posts, but then in the third act, it turned into Finn writing long, boring, moody journal entries addressed to Gena in which she broods about why her teenaged friend is so emotionally immature (Finn is 22 and Gena is 18), and Gena writing indecipherable poetry on random bits on scrap paper and on the bottom of everyone's shoes, for some reason, like she's the star of some quirky indie movie. Gag. Finn's writing style became so grandiose and vague towards the end that it was unclear what the hell was actually going on emotionally, and Gena's poems were gibberish. I get that poetry is allowed to be a little nebulous and/or off the wall, but it seems like Gena wasn't just being modest when she said that her poetry is bad. It really is just straight up bad.
Last thing (I think): the tragedy that happens to incite the action in the third act came out of NOWHERE. I actually liked some parts of how that tragedy ended up playing out, but I also feel like it completely derailed the tone of the story up until that point. I mean it when I say that the tragedy came out of literally nowhere. Like, we knew the characters were kind of reaching somewhat of a breaking point in their personal lives, but then this huge, tragic event happens, and it is so off-key and unexpected. I wouldn't have minded if it actually matched up to the rest of the book in tone, but it honestly read like the climax of an entirely different novel, which was just disarming. I wasn't reading this because I wanted to read something deep. I wanted something cute and fluffy and fun.
I started writing this review with the intention of giving this book three stars, and by the time I finished writing, I was so worked up about how much of a let-down the last act was that I ended up knocking another whole star off my rating. I was just so excited about where I thought this book was going, and then it didn't go that way, and I was left wanting something completely different to what I actually received. Very disappointed.