Title: Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
Publication: April 12th 2012 by Orion
Genre: Young-adult fiction
Pages: 336
Format: Paperback
Source: Purchased
Rating: 5/5
Synopsis:
Review:
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:
Comment below :)
