Superfan is a novel about a college student who discovers a new boy band and becomes a huge fan, whilst secrets about one of the band members threaten to be revealed. Minnie is lonely, a freshman at college in Texas who feels like an outsider struggling to make friends. When she discovers a video of HOURglass, an American band created in a K-Pop model, she’s found her new obsession. The band, especially the group’s bad boy Halo, bring her happiness and an online community that is there for her as she struggles in real life. However, Halo himself is struggling, with secrets from before he became famous and the pressures of life in a band where everything is controlled by the record label.
This is a multi-faceted novel that combines a coming-of-age college narrative with a story about parasocial relationship and manufactured fame. It is told concurrently from Minnie and Halo (real name Eason)’s perspectives, bringing a dual narrative that you know must collide at some point beyond Minnie’s obsession. A lot of the book actually isn’t just about Minnie and the band, but about Minnie’s time at college as she attempts to find herself, but instead finds a controlling guy who isn’t quite her boyfriend and his creepy friend. It is interesting therefore that the book has a dual narrative, as it is easy to imagine it just from Minnie’s perspective, but by having Eason there as well with a separate tense narrative, there’s a lot more packed in. There’s a lot of realistic details about online fan communities, though there’s not as much resolution from that side of things, nor around the ways that the band were manipulated and the ethics of that.
Overall, Superfan is a campus novel crossed with a boy band novel and a dash of thriller, and it’s definitely fascinating for anyone who has spent time online seeing fan communities in action.
Fiendfully Reading 
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