Review: Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

Title: Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

Publication: April 12th 2012 by Orion

Genre: Young-adult fiction

Pages: 336

Format: Paperback

Source: Purchased

Buy: Amazon UK / The Book Depository

Rating: 5/5

Synopsis:

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

Review:

After loving 'Fangirl' by Rainbow Rowell, I decided to pick up Eleanor and Park which has been sitting on my bookshelf for a while now just waiting to be read. Eleanor and Park did not disappoint!

 I loved this book, I think I liked the characters in this book the best. I loved the character of Eleanor, I love the way she comes across at the start of the book in the way she dresses and she just generally comes across like she doesn't care what anyone thinks of her. Later on in the book we see just like any teens nowadays that she still is quite self-conscious and has her own problems at home. I really like the contrast in character between Eleanor and Park, I think it shows a fine example of something I learned in science class...opposites attract!..well not exactly, but that's another reason I loved this book. This may be hard for me to explain but I have a love/hate relationship with those books were the main characters fall in love insistently and it was love at first sight and all that, as in I love them because we all dream of having relationships like that and it makes me feel good to read...but I hate them because they are so unrealistic, like seriously things like that just don't happen in the real world. In this book the relationship building was just perfect it had the all the awkwardness of young love and it happened slowly through out the book, from comics to cassettes....

My favourite additional characters were Eleanor's friends, DeNice and Beebi and Park's mom Mindy.

I found DeNice and Mindy's conversations with Eleanor after gym class left me laughing out loud sometimes while reading.I also thought Park's mom Mindy to be so funny, I don't think her character was supposed to be funny but I just found how brutally honest and to the point she is to be hilarious at times.

The relationship between Eleanor and Park in this book was the kind of relationship in a book where I could literally read a never ending book about it and never get bored, it just seemed so real and true, it wasn't always perfect and there was bumps in the road, but you could still see they were meant for each other.

But obviously to make a good story (even if we may not like it) there always has to be the bad guys to balance out the good. And lets just say that the plot twist at the end made it really clear who the bad guy in this story was, like holy crap Richie better go burn in the pits of hell. Obviously we know that he is the bad guy from the start as he seems to be abusive towards Eleanor's mom, but the ending of the book....I can't even, Richie is just the devil! That is all I have to say...

For anyone who has already read this book you are going to know what I am talking about, if not you might as well skip this part. The ending of this book left me so annoyed, I hate cliffhangers! What were the 3 words Eleanor sent to Park, I know the obvious answer would probably be "I love you" but I am the kind of person that needs a defiant answer to these kind of things After reading the authors note at the end of the book, where the author talks a bit about the last three words, I changed my mind a little bit as I like the way she explains that she felt it was a private moment between the two of them, and that it felt rude intruding on that special moment, that it should be kept to themselves, it didn't feel right to share what Eleanor wrote...It still kind of pissed me off though..

Although this story didn't necessarily have the happy ending I was expecting, I feel it suited the book the more I thought about it and the more I read the authors note in the back.They are only 17 years old! it may be the end of the book, but they have may more days ahead of them. Like Rainbow Rowell said "I don't believe that 17-year-olds get happy ending. They get beginnings".

Rating:

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