ELEANOR & PARK - RAINBOW ROWELL

Title - ELEANOR & PARK

Author - Rainbow Rowell

Genre - YA Romance 

Pages - 328

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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.

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I've read so much about this book online that I just had to push it to the top of my TBR list. Also, I wanted to read something written by Rainbow Rowell, and since this is her first novel, I thought why not.

This story is about Bullying, Child abuse, domestic abuse and above all the love Eleanor finds despite all the shit happening in her life. And this is the exact kind of love that drowns out every other negative aspect of her helpless life. 

I think the story could have been written much better. I might sound brutal, but it lacked depth. I couldn't feel the feelings of either of the characters, all the abuse and bullying didn't get to me the way it should've. The story talks about very sensitive issues, ones which should've made me cringe and cry. But I didn't, I just read through the book hoping I'll feel something in due course, much to my dismay.

The ending especially disappointed me. Eleanor should have been thankful to Park for what he did, instead she conveniently rejected him. She didn't write to him, she didn't call him, she didn't even read the million letters he wrote to her. Eleanor seemed like a really messed up girl, he really was her only friend and that's what she did to him. She writes him a postcard no doubt, but after so many months! For what? How was he supposed to know that she was doing fine, that she started school in Minnesota and that her life was, for the first time in years, normal. 

 At the end of the book I developed hatred toward Eleanor because she came off as ungrateful. If the ultimate aim of the plot was to elicit hatred toward Eleanor, it was successful at doing it.

I wish the ending was different, it would have made a world of difference. In a good way.

Here is one of the many book trailers I thought best described the story.