June 15, 2014

Wicked Review: Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell


Published: April 12, 2012
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Acquired: Digital copy



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.


This is one of the books that gave me what they call a book hangover. Book hangover is worse than like the hangover we know. It didn't give me a massive headache and a reminder that you just downed a bottle or two of tequila. It did give me a shattered heart and an overwhelming flow of feels.

Rainbow Rowell did not disappoint here. She's the fat redhead who is constantly bullied and verbally abused by her stepfather and he's the Korean-American who's obsessed with comic books and music. They are not, I repeat, NOT your ordinary main characters. In fact, in a very normal story, both of them would be the secondary characters, not the main characters.

Eleanor found beauty with Park. She may wear the wrong clothes and she'd get verbal abuse everywhere but she felt the good side of life with Park, even in the smallest things he does. The story is set in the '80s, a time where most teenagers now aren't very familiar with except for maybe the music and the really bad fashion. But even though this was set before I was even born, this kind of love story will carry on through different generations.

You might think that theirs was what we call nowadays, instant love. That's what teenager love is. No matter how old or how cynical you are now, at one point or another, you have felt this. You meet a guy who makes your heart beat so fast and will make you blush by just the mere thought of him. Park was the kind of guy that made Eleanor really happy.

This book is really amazing. Amazing in a gut-wrenching, take-your-breath-away, the-feels-you-will-get-from-this-book-will-just-rip-you-apart. You just have to pick this up and read it.





Rainbow Rowell writes books. Sometimes she writes about adults (ATTACHMENTS and LANDLINE). Sometimes she writes about teenagers (ELEANOR & PARK and FANGIRL). But she always writes about people who talk a lot. And people who feel like they're screwing up. And people who fall in love.

When she's not writing, Rainbow is reading comic books, planning Disney World trips and arguing about things that don't really matter in the big scheme of things.

She lives in Nebraska with her husband and two sons.

Send your love to Rainbow Rowell here: Goodreads || Twitter

1 comment:

  1. The ending of this book was really something! Felt the feels so much after I read it. Great review!

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