That's What She Read

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