Oct 22, 2013

Book Review: Eleanor & Park - Rainbow Rowell

Title: Eleanor & Park
Author: Rainbow Rowell
Release Date: February 1st 2013
Publisher: Orion Books
Age Group: Young Adult
Source: Bought
Eleanor is the new girl in town, and with her chaotic family life, her mismatched clothes and unruly red hair, she couldn't stick out more if she tried.
Park is the boy at the back of the bus. Black T-shirts, headphones, head in a book - he thinks he's made himself invisible. But not to Eleanor... never to Eleanor.
Slowly, steadily, through late-night conversations and an ever-growing stack of mix tapes, Eleanor and Park fall for each other. They fall in love the way you do the first time, when you're young, and you feel as if you have nothing and everything to lose.
Let me tell you now that I'm aware of how insufficient this review is, because even all the words in my vocabulary would fail to give justice to Eleanor & Park. It truly is a book that you have to know for yourself, so I suggest you do just that.

For me, three aspects of Eleanor & Park make it the gem that it is. First and second are, well, Eleanor and Park, the girl who couldn't help but be noticed and the boy who didn't want to be noticed. Even if I had little in common with them, with the way Rainbow Rowell wrote their story, I couldn't help but feel like the three of us were kindred spirits.
She never felt like she belonged anywhere, except for when she was lying on her bed, pretending to be somewhere else.
The third aspect is their romance. Eerily real, it is where the book really stands out. Watching two kids who never quite fit in anywhere, even at home, slowly opening up and learning the secret passageways and nooks and crannies in each other's existence gave me warm, fuzzy feels. 
When she got on the bus that morning, she immediately lifted her head to find Park. He was looking up too, like he was waiting for her.
But with their reality comes darkness, and thanks to that little snippet right before chapter one, the warm, fuzzy feels were constantly mixed with a sense of foreboding. 

I went into this book already knowing that the romance would be young and innocent, the writing heart-wrenching—I knew I'd love it, but I didn't know how much. This is one of those books that just sucked me right in, and I could have started and finished it in one sitting if only I didn't want to relish the way it made me feel for a while longer. Eleanor & Park was such an experience that it managed to both awaken the sleeping butterflies in my stomach and also bring on the waterworks, and it is definitely one of my top reads for this year—heck, make that for ever.

MY FAVORITE PART is the first time Park gave one of his comic books to Eleanor. I'm pretty sure I was grinning like a maniac when I read it at school lol.

RATING:

1 comment:

  1. I really, really, really, really, really want to read this one after I read Fangirl this week. I should buy this, but I don't really have the money D: Still I really want to D:

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