Rainbow Rowell is one of my favorite authors, and I have loved so many of her books. Her writing is beautiful, characters fun and storylines always captivating.
That said, I didn’t love Carry On quite as much as I’d hoped too. It was definitely fun and worth reading, but I also had a few hang ups with it, especially at the beginning.
It’s meant to be fan fiction of a Harry Potter-esque novel from another book, a sort of remix of that magical story many of us know like the back of our hands. And I think Rowell did a great job of that, but especially in the beginning I couldn’t help but seek out the Harry Potter similarities. That pulled me completely out of the story for the first 100-pages or so. I wish she had done things just a little differently from HP. Though having Simon, The Chosen One, and Baz, a vampire, have feelings for each other is a ton of fun.
I did like how she turned the Chosen One trope on its head, even if it did confuse me a bit, and I loved Simon and Baz as characters. Their relationship had me both laughing and swooning, though I did feel that Simon’s feelings for Baz were an abrupt turnaround.
I enjoyed the book much more toward the end when the action ramped up and the HP similarities faded more to the background. I’ll be picking up the next one, Wayward Son, from the library. I want to see what else Baz and Simon have in store.
Three and a half stars out of five.
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