by Morgana (link)
Genre het, drama, romance
Pairings Isaac/OFC, Taylor/OFC, Zac/Kate
Length 22 chapters
Status Unfinished
Morgana was a good friend of mine during my early days in hanfic, so I was pleasantly surprised to see something relatively new from her. Her writing always had a strong atmosphere, and the title Penny Lane certainly evokes a specific feeling that I’m curious to see if and how it follows through on.
The writing is flowery but conversational, laying out the history of Taylor’s not-quite-relationship with his personal Penny Lane. Although none of it quite jibes with Hanson history as we know it, Morgana has laid out a pretty picture of how the album Underneath was written, largely inspired by the girl whose online journal Taylor stalked in hopes of gaining an insight into how she felt. Given that Morgana and I were early users of LiveJournal, I have to laugh at her inclusion of such a blog site; we might not have spoken for years, but it still feels like an inside joke to me.
Penny Lane is the sort of story where the characters are just too broken to ever make a relationship work, with each other or not. That can get frustrating, but seeing that they’re both at fault at times for things being such a mess makes it easier to stomach, and Morgana’s writing makes it clear that Taylor is the one romanticizing the situation and making Calley his Penny Lane.
Of course, they do end up together, although the story isn’t finished so it’s anyone’s guess how long their happiness lasted. I want to roll my eyes at such a fractured fairytale having a happy ending, but the nearly polished (with only a few typos) writing and smart literary references make Penny Lane an almost perfect example of the sort of romances that early to mid-2000s hanfic did so well.
Review by Bethany (website)