Simon Snow just wants to relax and savour his last year at the Watford School of Magicks, but no one will let him. His girlfriend broke up with him, his best friend is a pest and his mentor keeps trying to hide him away in the mountains where maybe he'll be safe. Simon can't even enjoy the fact that his room-mate and longtime nemesis is missing, because he can't stop worrying about the evil git. Plus there are ghosts. And vampires. And actual evil things trying to shut Simon down. When you're the most powerful magician the world has ever known, you never get to relax and savour anything.
Based on the characters Simon and Baz who featured in Rainbow Rowell's bestselling novel Fangirl, Carry On is a ghost story, a love story, a mystery and a melodrama. It has just as much kissing and talking as you'd expect from a Rainbow Rowell story - but far, far more monsters.
4.5 star ★ Audiobook⎮I honestly don't know where to start with this review because I'm not really sure what the hell I just heard. But I do know that I liked it. Throughout the entire audiobook, I kept telling myself that this story is like a mystery flavored Bertie's Bott Flavored Bean. It's good (as long as it's not bogey flavored), but no one really knows what they are ingesting. Is it supposed to be fanfiction? Written by Cath? Is it supposed to be part of the original Simon Snow series from Fangirl? All of these questions (and many more) kept popping up while I was listening and I had to keep reminding myself to just go with it. The one thing I am sure of is that this story is too glaringly similar to Harry Potter to be brushed off as a coincidence. Anyone that insists otherwise is fooling themselves. But bless my Harry Potter-loving heart, I don't even care. It's been almost a full decade since the last Harry Potter book was released and I will take what I can get, even if it means devouring watered-down knockoffs. To me, it seems that Rowell obviously knew this book would be seen as an imitation of Rowling's work and decided to take things a bit further by almost making it a work of satire. Certain elements of this story were so ridiculous that I felt Rowell was coming dangerously close to making fun of the reader. Now, that may be pushing it. Maybe I just didn't "get" Rowell's point in writing this. I did really enjoy almost every other element of this story. Rowell has something great here, but naming spells "Have a break. Have a Kit Kat" and other completely asinine things made it difficult to take seriously (yes, I know it Fantasy). At times, it seemed like she was treating the entire book as a spoof and that didn't sit particularly well with me. But that's my only beef and if it hadn't bothered me so much throughout the story, I wouldn't have mentioned it all. I enjoyed this audiobook so freaking much, that I found myself delaying it sometimes just to prolong the experience. I also came to realize that Simon and Baz happen to be the first male/male couple in one of my audiobooks (yeah, I really need more diversity on my TBR). About halfway through this audiobook, I began to ship them SO HARD. Although I liked this story way more than I liked Fangirl, I definitely think I identified more with Cath after listening to Carry On.
Narration review: The narrator absolutely made this audiobook. His voice was so comforting and gave me "warm fuzzies". For the most part, he did a good job of changing his voice and/or accent to help the listener distinguish between the characters. By the way, this audiobook included a little melodic piece before and after the beginning of the audiobook (as some do). It was only after completing the audiobook that I realized how similar the Carry On melody is to the tune used in the Harry Potter films (you know, the one probably playing your head right now). Cheers! ♣︎
Reading updates
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Started reading
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18 January, 2016:
Finished reading
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18 January, 2016:
Reviewed