Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

First of all, I would like to thank Answerly on youtube for starting a youtube driven book club. I think that it is such a cool idea, and I look forward to being an active part of it in the months to come. The reading for this month was Eleanor and Park, and I started it late, but ended up finishing it very very early.

Eleanor and Park is the story of two highschoolers from the 1980's who meet when they are thrown together on the bus. The two of them don't really talk very often, but when they start to realize that they have similar taste in comic books and music, the two become friends, and eventually even more.

THE STORY:
I don't even know where to begin with my feelings for this story. It was the first addition to my "Unbelievably Cute" Shelf on goodreads of the new year, and I think it greatly deserves its position there. The story flows and changes so easily, and while I had very high expectations going into this book, it fully met them, if not exceeded them. I am completely and utterly in love with this most unlikely love story and how it comes to be. I wish that there could be more to read of Eleanor and Park, but that ending was pretty much set in concrete, and there is nothing that can change it.

THE CHARACTERS:
I love how deep the characters are in this book. They have amazing personalities and ways that they project themselves to the rest of the world, but those projections are not the full extent of their characters. In fact, it is merely scratching the surface. I love that Eleanor is considered by everyone to just be very weird, as if she is grabbing for everyone's attention with the way she dresses and presents herself, but we learn through her that the reason she is always dressed weird is because it is all that her family can afford to give her to wear. The strange patches of colour on her clothing are her just using whatever pieces of fabric she can find to patch up the holes in her clothes. She has such a difficult home life and she is surrounded by so many terrible people, and it is so interesting to see how she deals with it throughout the book.

Park, oh Park. You are probably my first (but definitely not my last) contemporary fictional crush. I adore you so, so much. I love that Park doesn't really notice things about himself, and that he acts so much like a normal person. All of the thoughts that he has are thoughts that have probably gone through everybody's heads thousands of times while they were in high school, and because we have all been there, we couldn't really get mad at him, even when we wanted to. He is just so kind hearted, and I loved getting to see him grow throughout the story.

The thing I truly loved, however, was how even the characters that were cast as the bullies near the beginning of the book aren't actually that bad. We discover later on that they are willing to help Eleanor when she is having troubles with her step dad, even though it does, in fact, put them in some form of risk. Even the background characters in this book are deeper than they initially appear, and I think that is something which sets this novel apart from so many others.

MY THOUGHTS:
Well if you can't tell by now, I am in love with this book. I read an ebook of it, and now I have a mighty need for a physical copy, and will be saving up the cash to buy it. I love the story itself, I love the love story, I love the characters, I love the setting. Everything in this book was perfect, and it came into my life exactly when I needed it to. I look forward to reading any and all Rainbow Rowell books that I can get my hands on in the future.

STAR RATING: ★★★★★