Monday tip | Eleanor & Park

It is about…

Eleanor and Park. Park and Eleanor are two teenagers in the Eighties attending the High School of an American suburb and experiencing one of the most beautiful things life keeps on hand: the first big love. The first crush, with butterflies in one's tummy, feeling safe in being insecure and losing yourself in another person. Find a place in someone else that feels more like home than home.

Eleanor was right. She never looked nice.
She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice;
it was supposed to make you feel something.

This book reminds…

me of the time when butterflies had moved in my tummy for the first time, and I had no idea, what their fluttering means. Losing myself in eyes, moments which feel like the wing beat of a bee hummingbird and eternity at the same time. And a little bit melancholy comes up in me, because Rainbow Rowell reminds me of so many great moments this age keeps on hand.

Eleanor and Park are each for itself great construced characters and I immediately shared feelings with them. Everybody knows an Eleanor, everybody knows someone who is like Park. And sometimes they remind me of myself. Rainbow Rowell created a mesmerizing couple. But not only the protagonists are well-made, every appearing person has its story, its validity and stick in memory, also because they are stereotypes, but this kind of stereotype everybody of us knows.

I also like the choice of time and place, the contrast between a nascent love and the America of the Eighties with all its problems – which matter at the edge – underlines the plot in a very unique way.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m newly in love or because this book was my holiday reading: I’m honestly hooked. There’s nothing about Eleanor & Park I don’t like, I love it from the setup of the story to the writing style and the cover. I hardly ever read such a lovely, honest and simple love story and had so much joy with it. Blow botox, if I want to feel young again I just read this book. I find myself in this story, so much of my 15-year-old-me. Eleanor & Park is not only a book about falling in love, it’s also a book to fall in love with.