Parents' Guide to Carry On: Simon Snow Trilogy, Book 1

Once readers get past the obvious Harry Potter parallels, they'll find this page-turning romance yet another winning and heartwarming story from Rainbow Rowell. There's something magical about Rowell's coming-of-age tales, so this expansion of Fangirl is brilliant. Featuring a diverse and compelling set of characters, Carry On works, because Rowell is such a natural, humorous storyteller who captures the feelings of first love and self-discovery. It may initially be hard not to think of Simon as Harry, Penelope as a combination of both Ron and Hermione (she's initially a redhead and comes from a huge middle-class family), and Watford as Hogwarts, but as the story continues, those similarities fall away, and Rowell takes Simon on his own original journey. And of course, since Rowell is an expert in the slow-burning romance, the love story here is far more central than all that blink-and-miss snogging at Hogwarts.

The strength of Carry On is that once again Rowell doesn't soft-peddle the confusion and frustration of being a teenager, something that's amplified tenfold for an orphaned wizard such as Simon Snow. Not only is Simon working through his uncontrollable magic that just "goes off" like a bomb, he's also pretty obviously captivated with Baz, who in turn has always been in love with Simon and used his snobbery and disdain to mask his attraction. In lesser hands, the whole magical-world-building, character development, and gay romance would've crumpled under the weight of too many story lines, but Rowell has imbued Carry On with so much depth and humor that readers will instantly want to reread it and once again cheer for Simon to earn a happily ever after.