Ship It - Britta Lundin

Ship It by Britta Lundin
Genre: YA Realistic Fiction

Blurb (on back of book): CLAIRE is a sixteen-year-old fangirl obsessed with the show Demon Heart. FOREST is an actor on Demon Heart who dreams of bigger roles. When the two meet at a local Comic-Con panel, it's a dream come true for Claire. Until the Q&A, that is, when Forest laughs off Claire's assertion that his character is gay. 
Claire is devastated. After all, every last word of her super-popular fanfic revolves around the romance between Forest's character and his male frenemy. She can't believe her hero turned out to be a closed-minded jerk. Forest is mostly confused that anyone would think his character is gay. Because he's not. Definitely not.
Unfortunately for Demon Heart, when the video of the disastrous Q&A goes viral, the producers have a PR nightmare on their hands. In order to help bolster their image within the LGBTQ+ community-as well as with their fans-they hire Claire to join the cast for the rest of their publicity tour. What ensues is a series of colorful Comic-Con clashes between the fans and the show that lead Forest to question his assumptions about sexuality and help Claire come out of her shell. But how far will Claire go to make her ship canon? To what lengths will Forest go to stop her and protect his career? And will Claire ever get the guts to make a move on Tess, the very cute, extremely cool fanartist she keeps running into? Ship It is a funny, tender, and honest look at all the feels that come with being a fan.

MY OPINION: **

I really wanted to enjoy this book. I mean, it was honestly everywhere. But for me, personally, I felt lie the representation of people who are so similar to me was unrealistic.

This book is based off of a TV show's "fandom" which is full of fans who write fanfiction, post GIFs of characters, etc. I, for one, am personally part of multiple fandoms and I felt like how it was written here was NOT how it is IRL.

Claire Strupke is this fan of the show Demon Heart who strongly ships the two main characters, Smoke and Heart, together. Now, for me, shipping is a fairly regular term but as I learned in this book, a lot of people don't know what "shipping" is. Shipping is basically when you want two characters/people to be together romantically. It can be between literally anybody. If your ship becomes real in the TV show/movie/IRL, then it's considered "canon" and that's what any shipper dreams for.

However, Claire takes her shipping to an EXTREME. She goes to her first ComicCon to see the Demon Heart panel and is chosen to ask a question to the cast about the show. Naturally, being an extreme shipper, she asks about SmokeHeart to the cast members who play them, Forest and Rico. Forest is surprised, as if he didn't know anything about this ship. I mean, apparently there were hundreds of fans who all united to support this ship but Forest didn't know anything about it.

Why not? Because he's not on any social media.

That's fairly rare for young adults (he isn't a teenager but he's in his early-twenties, I believe) and it's even more bizarre for celebrities. I'm not saying that just because you're young and a celebrity you should have social media but it's weird when you haven't even been exposed to any of the things that people are saying about you or your show via Tumblr, Twitter, etc.

ANYWAYS, Forest does NOT give Claire the answer she wants about SmokeHeart and instead laughs it off and is utterly rude. I would not act like Claire would but if a cast member was that rude to a fan, I honestly would stop watching the show.

Agh, who am I kidding. Maybe I would take three days off and then resume watching again ;)

Afterwards, in an effort to stop the "anger of the fandom" about Forest's response to gay pairings in the show, the producers literally ask Claire to tour along with them throughout all of the Comic Cons in all of these different cities. Now, this is the part that really threw me off. Nobody would do that. Nobody would waste that much money to take a fan along on their Comic Con tour just to appease the fans. Also, no mother would ever agree to something that quick without at least looking at the Terms and Services and ASKING MORE QUESTIONS.

Aside from that, we see Claire embark on this trip across North America. Let me remind you, Claire has no friends, is unsure of who she is, and only cares about her fandom to keep her going.

We get a lot of Forest's POV and we really see how he is struggling from his inner homophobia that he doesn't want to admit. Now, he really makes up for it but his blindness to the world is just there for everybody to see.

Now, Claire herself is struggling from sexual orientation issues. At all of the Comic Cons, she meets this girl named Tess who is living in her car in an effort to go to all of the Comic Cons, which again seemed weird to me. Claire has never thought of herself as gay but she has had a bad kissing experience with this guy. Now, Tess intrigues her. Claire finds herself unable to stop thinking about this girl and noticing the little things on her clothes or her "attractive" features and whatnot.

I loved how the author used Tess to show that Demon Heart had some diversity issues. I've seen this on many shows. You never see diversity in a lot of the shows that I've watched. (I mean, go watch The Fosters if you want diversity; it's honestly amazing how so many different people are represented). Tess identifies as a "homoromantic pansexual" which I can't explain here because I would have a hard time explaining it correctly. Claire envies how sure Tess is about who she is and who she loves and Claire has a hard time identifying who she is herself.

LET ME JUST SAY if there was a book of just Claire's fanfiction, I would totally read it. My main enjoyment in this book came from the FanFiction, though I can't imagine writing anything like that. There was so little of it and yet I loved what we got.

I've read a lot of reviews saying that Demon Heart is like Supernaturals so maybe I'll take a peek at that sometime in the future?

Claire is obsessive over her ship. She at one points blackmails the writer of the show and holds him hostage in this room because she hacked into his Twitter account.

Wow.

There was just a lot in this book that I wanted to love but ended up not. However, THE ENDING was phenomenal and really boosted up my appreciation of this book.

I would recommend this book to fans of Fangirl or any fandom people out there.

Main Character: Claire
Sidekick(s): Rico, Tess, Forest, Caty, etc
Villain(s): Writing, fandom obsession, etc
Realistic Fiction Elements: The basis of this book was very real to life.