Review: Carry on - Rainbow Rowell

Genre: YA Fantasy

Published: 6th October 2015

Length: 528 pages

My rating: 10/10

Overview: Simon Snow, the Chosen One, returns to his final year at Watford - an academy of magic. He will face the biggest threat to magic yet, whilst struggling to cope with his roommate and rival, Baz.

AHHHHHH! Was my first thought reading this. It was absolutely awesome and a definite page turner. I read Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, I think about a year and a half ago, and although I enjoyed it at the time I wasn't overly interested in reading any of her works, even though of course Snowbaz was heavily referenced in that book. However since then I've become a lot gayer™ and now I'm desperate for any books with gay characters so I decided to give this a try and I'm so happy I did!

Firstly we need to talk about the Drarry influence on this book. I actually had no idea that Simon and Baz were inspired by Drarry going into this book, and about halfway through the second or third chapter I got suspicious as there were many similarities, so I looked at some other reviews and found it was intentional. AS IF I DIDN'T LOVE THIS BOOK ENOUGH ALREADY. I fucking love Drarry and anything to do with Hogwarts so reading this was like a dream come true. Simon is the 'orphan' kid who can't wait to go to back to magic boarding school and is also the 'chosen one', and meanwhile his rival Baz comes from a long magical ancestry who worship power. It's Drarry all over. The best thing about it is that Simon has zero idea he's gay, whereas Baz has been pining for Simon for years, which is definitely what its like in Harry Potter (plus Simon's obsession with Baz ahhhh ok I need to stop or I'm going to combust with feels).

Although the Harry Potter influence is very obvious at the start, the book does develop away from that and into its own original story which is nice to see too. Some of it was a bit predictable, but it didn't really spoil the big reveals so I won't lower my rating. One random thing I loved was that the spells were common phrases used by humans, that was just really cool and original. Simon was a cool protagonist but honestly its Baz who captured my heart and I would sacrifice anything for this poor smol gay child to be happy. He is so precious. As I already knew Snowbaz were going to end up together, I have to admit that I kept flicking through the book to find out when they were going to kiss as I was literally dying waiting for it to happen, and when I finally got there it was fully rewarding. The scene with all the fire and shit where they kiss is definitely the highlight of the book for me and I thought that although it was quite simply written, it was certainly effective and emotive and a lot better than most romantic scenes in books I've read. The only thing I'm lacking is some smutty scenes (if you have any great Snowbaz smut please send it to me I'm begging you).

If you ship Drarry, you must read this. If you need some gay romance, you must read this. If you like fantasy and magic, you must read this. If you don't like any of these things then still read it because it's fucking awesome and probably the book I've most enjoyed since ACOWAR came out last May. Yeah. Why are you still here - go read it!

#review #rainbowrowell