Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

Publishing Date: February 26^th 2013

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Rating: 5/5 stars

Book Description:

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.

My Review:

I read this book after hearing a lot of hype about this book and Rowell’s other book fangirl. This book made me long for a cute relationship like that of Eleanor and Park.

Eleanor and Park is set in modern time in a normal city. This story is about two teenagers who go to school and about how they fall in love. Eleanor lives in a family with three siblings, her mother has remarried and the man gets very angry and violent. Park on the other hand has one sibling, a father with high standards of his son, and his mother is a Korean beautician. Eleanor meets Park on her first day at her new school. At first Eleanor and Park don’t get on but as the story rolls on they become very close.

Eleanor is one of the main characters, she goes to a new high school where she is becomes apart of the lower class in the social ladder. Eleanor comes from a poor family where they have barely enough money to be putting food on their table. Eleanor is very concealed girl who doesn’t share her thoughts with anyone, but at the same time she is very strong and will stand for anything she believes.

Park is the kind of kid who caves in on peer pressure and struggles to stand for what he believes if people in the higher class of the social ladder don’t agree with it. Park at first doesn’t like Eleanor as the ‘popular’ kids don’t accept her, but later on in the story he develops into someone who doesn’t care what the ‘popular’ people think and becomes Eleanor’s best friend.

Rowell really captured young love in the story and how teenagers know how to love and take risks when it comes to love. This story is one of the most impacting books that took me on a roller coaster of emotions. I recommended this book to all my reading buddies and now recommend it to you!

-Happy Readings

  

Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days, #1) by Susan Ee

Publishing date: May 21^st 2011

Publisher: Feral Dream

Rating: 5/5 stars

Book Description:

It's been six weeks since angels of the apocalypse descended to demolish the modern world. Street gangs rule the day while fear and superstition rule the night. When warrior angels fly away with a helpless little girl, her seventeen-year-old sister Penryn will do anything to get her back.

Anything, including making a deal with an enemy angel.

Raffe is a warrior who lies broken and wingless on the street. After eons of fighting his own battles, he finds himself being rescued from a desperate situation by a half-starved teenage girl.

Traveling through a dark and twisted Northern California, they have only each other to rely on for survival. Together, they journey toward the angels' stronghold in San Francisco where she'll risk everything to rescue her sister and he'll put himself at the mercy of his greatest enemies for the chance to be made whole again.

My Review:

I received this book for my birthday from my best friend and until then I hadn’t heard about it. My friend who gave it to me hadn’t read it but thought it looked interesting and decided I could be her experiment guinea pig! I read it pretty much as soon as I got it and could not put it down! I was so engulfed into the book and intrigued by the plot and the characters.

Angelfall is set in a post-apocalyptic world where there is an on going war between humans and angels. The angels are depicted as bad guys in this story and they make the humans live in fear afraid to leave their houses. The adventure first starts when Penryn, her mother and her little sister Paige (who is crippled) are out at night when they come across a group of angels cutting off another angels wings. Penryn decided to help the angel to allow her mother and sister to run away but whilst doing this her little sister Paige is taken by one of the angel and her mother escapes. Raffe the angel who she helped save agreed to help Penryn find her sister.

Penryn is the main character who we follow around and boy do you fall in love with her. She is so love able, you love the way she can fight and kick- ass, she is so determined and never losses sight of her goal. Her sister is in a wheelchair, her mother has schizophrenia and her father left them. These events have helped her grow her character and made her very strong and independent.

Raffe the angel helps Penryn on her quest and is a very mysterious character. We don’t know pretty much anything about his past and it enjoyably annoyed me that we dont know anything he felt or was thinking. He like Penryn is a very determined character as he could only think about getting his wings back and on.

There wasn’t much romance in this story but it shows mainly at the end. The romance is barley if there at the beginning and as the story moves on it grows bigger and bigger. I think this just shows Penryn’s and Raffe’s determination for their goals and how they wouldn’t get distracted.

Ee has created an amazing magical world and has created a new and unique perception on angels. The ending aroused many different emotions in me and made me fall even more deeply in love with the novel.

I cannot wait to read the next book in this series!

This book is a must read for everyone, DO NOT MISS OUT!!