Gena/Finn by Kat Helgeson, Hannah Moskowitz

Gena/Finn

by Kat Helgeson and Hannah Moskowitz

Gena and Finn would have never met, but for their mutual love for the hit TV show, Up Below. Regardless of their differences—Gena is a recent high school graduate whose social interactions largely take place online, while Finn is in her early twenties, encountering the difficulties of job hunting in a poor economy and contemplating marriage with her longtime boyfriend—the two girls realise that the bond between them is more than fan fiction. But when disaster strikes and Gena's world turns upside down, only Finn can save her, and that, too, comes with a price. Told through e-mails, text messages, journal entries, and blog posts, Your Machine Anatomy is a story of friendship and love through social media in the digital age.

Reviewed by readingwithwrin on

4 of 5 stars

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“I’ve always had a fandom. I’ve always had characters who live in my head and mess with my heart and tell me stories, and I love it.”


Gena and Finn is one of those books that I picked up because it's supposed to be about college and switching from Highschool to college, which is something that I've been looking for more. Don't get me wrong I still love my YA, but I want college books now too, ones that don't involve sex all the time.

This book did that, we get to see Gena go from a boarding school to a college setting where she struggles to cope with multiple things. We see her struggle to make ends meet and her parents being absent, all while she's in this fandom and is pretty well known in it. Then we have Finn who is a recent college graduate looking for a job, and trying to decide if she wants to be with her boyfriend forever or not. She is also in the same fandom as Gena but isn't as well known and Finn does some pretty nice fan art as well.

Gena and Finn are two unlikely characters who probably wouldn't have ever met if it hadn't been for fandom. With this fandom, they slowly become friends and start to tell each other everything. Things that they haven't ever told anyone else. We get to see them fall in a type of love, and friendship where the lines blur and your not really sure if they're a thing or not. Which makes things extremely complicated considering Finn has a boyfriend who wants to marry her.
Besides the romance part of this book, though we get to see a condition where Gena sees's things that aren't really there and even though she is on medicine for it, it has greatly made her question everything she see's because of that.

Overall I really liked this story. Not only was it a nice college-aged book that shows freshman year and what happens after graduating. It dealt with internet friendships and how fandoms can make some of the best bonds between people. It dealt with what happens when your alone and have no one really to talk to about things. Gena/Finn also deals with so much more.

If you want a college-aged book that shows the reality of and fandom as well, then this book is for you!

"You didn't get to choose what happened to you.
You don't get to choose if it still hurts you.
You get to choose if you put it in your sentence about yourself."

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 23 January, 2018: Finished reading
  • 23 January, 2018: Reviewed