Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

" 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. "

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

328 pages

There are trillions of romance YA books waiting for you to delve into them. This just happens to be one of the best I've read in a long time.

Eleanor is noticeably different than anyone in her school. It could just be because she's new to the school or because her stepdad finally let her back into the house. It's not like her mom stopped her stepdad from kicking her out. When Eleanor returns home--a year later--everything and everyone is different. Her sisters, her brothers--everyone. They're not exactly on her side against their stepdad anymore either.

Park is just getting by. He knows the rules of the school and he's not planning to stick out. Especially not on the bus when he's got a comfortable spot by himself. Then Eleanor appears on the bus and he can't help but to make room for her.

Eleanor isn't what most people would call pretty. She's called chubby at best. It's no wonder she's already landed herself a nickname on her first day. Her weight, however, doesn't explain why she seems to already have someone after her head.

Park and Eleanor--Eleanor & Park--have been sitting near each other on the bus for a while. They haven't spoken one word to each other since he told her to sit down on her first day. Then they start talking to each other and not talking to each other quickly stops being an option.

I absolutely loved this book. The setting, 1986, doesn't seem like a random date after reading this. From all of the things I've seen and heard, love now is horribly different than love then. I think that might have been why Eleanor & Park was set 1986 instead of, say, 2010.

Love is a strong, sometimes unbreakable connection to a lot of people. In Eleanor & Park, love is that desperate, overwhelming thing that rids you of every thought until you're only thinking of them. Back then, technology wasn't as advanced as it was now--that much is obvious. Connection, communication, wasn't as easy. If you needed to talk to someone as if your life depended on it, you'd brace the journey to their home or call them or drive to them. The internet was not an option. I guess that's why Eleanor & Park is an amazing, special book.

Eleanor & Park tells the tale of young, desperate, craving love when connecting to someone wasn't that easy for some people. Fans of John Green or Sarah Dessen or anything in YA romance will dig into this book like there's no tomorrow. Then they'll fall into a shocked state as they turn and read through the last pages...