Eleanor and Park Review

Title: Eleanor and Park
Author: Rainbow Rowell
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Genre: Romance, Contemporary

Blurb: 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.

Me: Well welcome to the sweet delicious escape from the world of "hot, steamy, sexy" romance.  I'm not saying Eleanor and Park isn't hot, steamy or sexy, mind you. It just has a lot more to it than just that.

The Ups: I swear this book is evilly real. It sucks you into it and it isn't just the uncool girl and the football quarterback just coincidentally running into each other at a romantic coffee shop. It's awkward and sweet and horrible and wonderful and everything in between. It has you at your feet begging for the connection to turn into something real, for one of them to make the first move, to think beautiful the things that are painfully awkward and real.
Well that kind of sums up everything I absolutely adore in this book. The other small things, like Eleanor's hair, Park and the fact that he's half Korean (we connect!) and DeeDee, who I love, just help to contribute to the believability of the whole book.

The Downs: So when I first finished the book, I was left with a sense of horror. Like, "How could Rainbow Rowell do that?" I'M NOT SPOILING, mind you. But sometimes you need a book to be a book. For everything to be okay, the happy ending. The bittersweetness of this ending and the entire book in general put me in pain for the moment I was reading it, but later I think that added to the realism and the general understanding of the book.

Rating: GOSH what is WITH THIS AUTHOR? Beat my scale AGAIN.