20.03.2014
It took me forever to motivate myself enough to sit down and finally write a review of "Eleonor and Park" by Rainbow Rowell. Don't worry there won't be any spoilers in this post. I don't like to ruin the books for other people. I wanted to read "Me before you" by Jojo Moyes and I told my Mom about this book. She read it and told me the ending. Can you believe this? There is no point for me to read it now.
The story in "Eleonor and Park" takes place in the 80's. It was quite interesting for me to remember the times we used to listen to music on walkmans. Park is a teenager, who has a nice family. His mother is Korean and this fact does not make him very popular at school. Eleanor is the new girl, who is overweight, she has red hair and she dresses funny. She comes from a family with domestic violence, her stepdad drinks a lot and he hits her mother. Eleaonor has four siblings and there is never enough money in her family. She sits next to Park in the school bus on her first day at the new school and this is the beginning of their love story.
Eleonor is constantly bullied by the kids in her school because of the strange way she looks, they are really cruel to her. At home she is living in fear because of her stepdad. Her love towards Park is the only nice thing in her life. I really liked the characters in the book. The story is sad and beautiful at the same time. If you like "The fault in our stars" by John Green you'll love "Eleonor and park". I found a review of the book written by John Green himself for The New York Times link. You can read it, beacuse of course it is better than my review.
This book is quite different from the other bestsellar by Rainbow Rowell "Fangirl" (you can read more about it here). I am impressed by the fact that an author can write two books that are so different and at the same time both are so wonderful. I gave "Eleonor and Park" four stars, because it is one of these stories that are kind of slow to read. It is not one of the books that you just can't put down. I highly recommend "Eleonor and Park" though. The book covers many problems that teenagers face - bulling at school and at home, the first love and growing up.
"Eleonor and Park" is not translated in Bulgarian yet. The book is published in 2013, so I really hope we see it in Bulgarian soon.
