Eleanor & Park - Rainbow Rowell

Goodreads Synopsis:

Two misfits.
One extra-ordinary love.

Eleanor... Red hair, wrong clothes. Satnding 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 even gets to the punchline. There's a place on his chest, just below his throat, that makes her want to keep promises... Park.

Set over a 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 enought to try.

Review:

Park wants nothing more but to get through the school year without being noticed by bullies. How can he do that now when the new girl sits beside him on the bus everyday? She has big, red, curly (unruly) hair and dresses in huge man clothes. He tries his best not to talk to her until one day when she reads his comic book with him thru the bus ride. And as they say, the rest is history.

They start to talk, he lends her comic books and cassette tapes (this was set in the 80's so yes, they still have cassettes and walkmans), she starts going to his house, eat dinner with his family. The only problem is that Eleanor's family cannot know, or else her stapfather would kill her, or throw her out of the house, if she's lucky. Why won't he? He did it before, and Eleanor wasn't allowed to get back until after a year.

Everything goes well until she finds messages in her books, rude and indecent. After a while, they find out that it was from her stepdad. Park had to drive her to her uncle's, a seven-hour drive away.

This part is where I start to cry...

Park writes her letters, she doesn't write back. Eleanor receives his letters, she doesn't open them. He waits and waits until one day he receives a postcard from her, with three word written on them.

That is the whole mystery, the author decides not to share what those three words are. She says that we've been reading about their whole love story in 300 pages, and now, we should let them have some privacy. I mean, seriously?