Book Review: Eleanor & Park

Title: Eleanor & Park
Author: Rainbow Rowell
Series: Eleanor & Park
Book #: 1
Pages: 328
Book Rating:

Goodreads Rating: 4.18

Published: February 26th 2013

Two misfits.
One extraordinary love.

Eleanor... Red hair, wrong clothes. Standing behind him until he turns his head. Lying beside him until he wakes up. Making everyone else seem drabber and flatter and never good enough...Eleanor.

Park... He knows she'll love a song before he plays it for her. He laughs at her jokes before she ever gets to the punch line. There's a place on his chest, just below his throat, that makes her want to keep promises...Park.

Set over the course of one school year, this is the story of two star-crossed sixteen-year-olds—smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.

“I just want to break that song into pieces and love them all to death.” 

  That quote perfectly describes how I feel about this book. I just want to tear this book into pieces and love them all to death. When I was reading the book I started by liking the characters and how they acted and then out of nowhere BOOM! I fell in love with them! I kept on flipping through the pages like crazy, I had never before been so invested in some characters like I was with Eleanor and Park. Their love is just pure and innocent, it reminds me back when I had my first boyfriend and holding hands was a big deal. 

“Holding Eleanor's hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive.”

  Their epic romance starts not with words but with silence. They communicate through comic books and music. And then it keeps on progressing. For the first time I read a book that it's about two normal high school kids falling in love in a VERY realistic way. It wasn't love at first sight in fact they had a rocky beginning, but that's what makes this book so amazing. Because it feels realistic, and the readers can relate to this book. I remember being in high school and being self-conscious, just like Eleanor. And Park being half Korean and half Irish and trying to figure who he really was, just like any other teenager in the world.

 “Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.” 

  I liked how the story was really realistic. It wasn't all about romance there was also family problems. But the only problem I had was with Eleanor's step father. Would an adult really do that? Right those things like a little kid? To me that was a little unbelievable. But over all I really liked this book so much and if you haven't read it I recomend that you go and read it right now.