Review of "Eleanor & Park" by Rainbow Rowell

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Genre: YA/Romance

Page Count: 328

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: This story was one of the saddest, and somehow sweetest, things that I've ever read. Eleanor is the awkward, chubby new girl who always seem to do everything wrong. Park is a misfit because he's Asian in a predominantly white school, but he manages to fly under the radar. Sitting together on the bus, they start to realize just how similar and different they are.

Like all of Rainbow Rowell's books, Eleanor & Park is refreshingly real. The characters seem so much like someone I could see any day of the week just on the street. They're so alive it's hard to believe that they're fictional. The best part is that they're flawed. Neither is perfect and they have flaws that aren't stereotypical in the YA genre.

Plus, it's nice to read a story about a girl who isn't skinny as a twig.

Eleanor & Park is sort of like a fruit. It takes a little while to get sweet and for a while it's great, but then it goes sour after a while. Not to say that the book gets bad at the end, but the ending is sad and there are some seriously creepy things that happen in the last few chapters.

This is one of those books that I feel like everyone has to read, but some people may not relate to it as much as others. It should have a label "best appreciated by misfits."

Rating: