Rainbow Rowell, will you be my best friend? (A love letter)

Dear Rainbow,

May I call you Rainbow? It's such a beautiful name, and although I know you don't know me, after spending several weeks binge reading your books I feel like you are a dear friend. Is that creepy? Gosh, I hope it's not creepy. Now I'm feeling like a stalker. I promise you, I'm a fairly lovely person. At least that's what my mother tells me.

Last year at some point I went on a John Green binge and when I ran out of books he'd written I turned to his tumblr (by the way, I don't actually know how tumblr works or why it's spelled without an e before the r but it's all I had). He raved about your book, Eleanor and Park, saying :

"If you read a lot, you can get jaded. You can forget how a reader has to be generous to a book as much as a book has to be generous to its reader. You feel like maybe everything worth doing has been done, and nothing will ever blow you away ever again.

And then you read a book like Eleanor and Park, and you are shocked out of your complacency and grateful to be alive. As you can tell from my review in the New York Times Book Review, I really love this book. Months later, I’m still thinking about it."

Not hesitating for a moment, I purchased the ebook for a whopping $1.99 and dove right in, expecting great things. Because John Green. Unfortunately, my expectations were too high and I quit reading within the first chapter. Mostly because I was turned off by excessive profanity. I'm an old fashioned kinda gal, Rainbow. 

Flash forward to a year later and there is this nagging voice in the back of my mind telling me to try it again. I probably stopped and started three or four times, never making it past the first chapter, and then I read a review of Fangirl, so I decided to give it a try. I was hooked by the first page. If you knew me, Rainbow, you'd know that I am a Harry Potter Fangirl, and I connected with Cath's passion for Simon immediately. I devoured the book, and then I plowed through Attatchments, followed by Eleanor and Park, and then I started over again while I waited for Landline to be released. 

Occasionally I come across an author that really resonates with me.  Their ability to create a world that I could become so wrapped up in it that, for a while, I abandon my own, astounds me. You are a master at the character driven novel. I tend to gravitate towards contemporary realistic fiction, and you do it beautifully.

The thing I love about your characters is that they are unapologetically real. So many times I wanted to reach in and give Eleanor a hug, or nudge Lincoln in the right direction, or talk some sense into Wren. You give a voice, a story, to the powerless. You give strength where society would otherwise say there is weakness.

Here's the thing: I'd love to go out to lunch and pick your brain. And while we are at it, since you are well entrenched in the publishing world could you also invite John Green, Kate Morton, Jojo Moyes, and Melina Marchetta? I ask nothing more than a lunch. And a few dozen more novels. And I'd love it if we were friends. Best friends, who wear those heart necklaces split in half. I mean, I already have a best friend, but if you say yes, Rainbow, I'd drop her like a hot potato (kidding, she'd love you too). 

Love, 

A devoted Fangirl

*If you could be best friends with an author, who would you pick?