Hey everybody!
Welcome back to Tanner's Books and Beyond, here today with a review of Gena/Finn
by Hannah Moskowitz/Kat Helgeson.
Ooh, that - that glare is gonna get bad. Let's - oh, come on - ooh!
That's actually really nice! Kinda dig this better than the jacket!
Gena/Finn is a story about two girls (obviously named Gena and Finn).
They're both involved in the fandom of - well it doesn't really matter what they're in the
fandom of, all that matters is that they're very intensely involved in the fandom.
Gena likes to write fanfic and Finn likes to draw fanart.
They both have their own blogs, they both have their own little fandoms of themselves
within the greater scope of the fandom, and eventually near the start of the book they
start to message each other.
Gena writes a really good fanfic and Finn draws some fanart for it and she's like "hey
let me show you this thing" and Gena's like "oh wow it's so great!"
So your usual fandom stuff.
First off let me just say that if you are involved in fandom you will probably be able
to relate to this book.
I wouldn't say the fandom aspect is better or worse than Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, I'd
say they're about the same.
I'd just say they deal with different aspects of fandom.
This one is very much about the friendship you can find within the fandom.
So as they message each other they start to learn about each other and we start to learn about them.
Gena is 18 years old and she's just going in to university.
She feels she is Way More Mature than all of her other friends because she's had to
deal with all this stuff, like her parents sort-of basically abandoning her; she used
to be a former child star (which she doesn't like to talk about); and she has a history
of mental illness which is never explicitly defined but she does throw out words like
"pseudo-schizophrenic symptoms".
Basically when she doesn't take her medicine she gets some paranoia, she gets some depression,
and she starts to hallucinate things being on fire, which can be kind of an issue.
On the other hand we have Finn, who has just finished college and she has just moved out
to California to live with her boyfriend of four years.
She's very much scared of growing up, she's trying really hard to hang on to that inner
child that she's managed to keep going since she finished high school, so she really doesn't
want to be looking for a job, she really doesn't know what to do with her relationship, especially
when she finds out that the guy might even want to propose to her.
Now even though their friendship starts to grow, relationship starts to effect their
offline lives and it gets to the point where Finn's boyfriend starts to think that she
might even be emotionally cheating on him; which Finn denies but it's kind of obvious
that that is pretty close to what's happening here.
They share everything with each other basically, and they go to conventions together over the
summer, and then Finn basically up and leaves to go visit Gena when Gena starts to feel
bad in the middle of her first semester at university.
Now I don't want to give away too many spoilers for this, but I will say that just before
the third act they get into a fight (which is normally what happens in these kind of
arcs) and then some shit goes down that kicks off the third act that causes them to really
examine what they've been doing with their lives, what they want out of their lives,
what they want out of each other, basically what they want out of this friendship, like
how is this connection helping them at all, is it even helping them?
Now I really loved this book, and while there are some iffy elements, on the whole it was
very well written.
Speaking of the writing, the format itself is quite interesting because it's basically an epistolary novel.
All of the text that we get in here is from tumblr posts of blog posts or tweets or texts
or emails or sticky notes attached to the fridge or poems written on the bottom of shoes,
anything but actual dialogue between two people.
Now I did really like that just because it was interesting, but there are some things
that kinda gave me pause, mainly a lot of segments take place with characters emailing
each other back and forth, and it's like - while it helps with the pacing and it helps get
everything out in large chunks instead of having to text each other back and forth,
who the heck sends so many emails?!
Like this is literally twenty emails being exchanged each day.
It's not even this huge thing but it just kept bugging me, like...I send maybe two emails...a
month! *giggles* I'm pretty sure the emails were introduced just so it would be easier
to write something similar that was similar to prose, essentially.
And speaking of prose there's also, in the third act, a lot of really large chunks written
in journals, so I feel like by that point Kat and Hannah were starting to get worn out
by trying to do all this stuff in the format of the emails and the texts and such and so
they wanted something that was a bit more traditional - a bit closer to traditional
prose and so that's why they did that.
It still works out very well, but reading that it kinda made me want to read more of
the book in just simple, well-written prose.
But those are just small potatoes and nitpicks compared to the grander themes of the story
that I really liked and some of the things that I wasn't super-fond of.
I mentioned this in my January Wrap-Up, this book has some queer content in it, but you
should not recommend it based off the queer content because it is very subtle.
There are some points were you could almost say it subtext, it's not even text.
There's nothing wrong with that, it does benefit the story in general but it's like - it's
kind of weird after reading so many queer books, and especially books written by Hannah
Moskowitz, where you get in there and it's just like AAAAWWWW THIS NARRATIVE IS BEING
SO QUEER ALL UP IN HERE!
WE'RE SPREADING RAINBOWS AND ACRONYMS ALL OVER THIS BUSINESS!
So to come into this book where one of the main conflicts is these two girls, they're
very close emotionally, but even in the book they refused to define what their relationship
is and so because things get to complicated in the book it does benefit the narrative
but also makes it complicated to define things in the story.
Now we can confirm that Gena is probably bisexual because while she has attractions to guys
in the narrative she also mentions how she has attractions to girls, so yeah she's definitely non-straight.
And then I would say Finn is also non-straight because while she never says anything about
feeling romantic attraction to Gena, there are parts later in the book where Gena starts
bonding with a guy and Finn starts to feel jealous because she's not solely emotionally
attached to Finn anymore.
Now related to that there is one thing I need to spoil that - it's not a huge thing but
if you don't want to get spoiled for it then maybe skip ahead a minute or so.
Anyways...I read some reviews on Goodreads and I've heard about others that there were
a lot of people who didn't like the fact that at the end of the story both Gena and Finn
end up romantically attached to male characters.
And, y'know, that's fine, that's great, but it's like - these people are complaining that
this is not the queer content they came here for.
Now I can sort of get where these people come from because if you came into this book being
told it was a queer book then you're going to expect the two girls to get together at the end.
Buuut, to call it things like saying it's a cop-out or even saying that it doesn't actually
contain queer content is going a bit to far and I would say verges into the biphobic.
Just because they clearly had Something going on with them doesn't mean they're not allowed
to also be attracted to other people and to genders other than just girls.
Anyways I just wanted to say that, I wanted to say that you shouldn't be coming in for
the queer content but you also shouldn't be the kind of person who says there's zero queer
content because there is some, it's just not what the book is about.
The book is really about Gena's mental health issues.
There's a lot of talk about how Gena's mental illness effected her as a child and how it's
effected the people around her and how it caused her to become the person she is today.
So I would certainly recommend it, but once again keep in mind I'm recommending this based
on the discussion on mental health and I'm not recommending it based on queerness.
The queerness is there it's just - I don't really want to call it a queer novel because
that's not what it's about.
I...god I feel like I keep sending mixed messages about this book.
It's a good book!
You should read it!
On the whole it is very...goodness! *awkward pause*
And that's all I've got for you guys today.
I hope you enjoyed it, I hope you were able to garner some insight as to whether you want
to read the book or not, hopefully you do.
In the meantime if you wanna see some of the other stuff I do you can like, share, and
subscribe to my channel, you can also check me out on Instagram and Goodreads in the links below!
So until next time I'll see you all *snap* later!
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