This is going to be more of a vomit of feels then it is going to be a review because my emotions are everywhere at the moment.

Characterisation is so important to me when I read books. Solid characters are necessary for me to enjoy a book and let me tell you, Eleanor and Park are the most beautiful characters.
I loved them so much because they were so effortless and real and I can't say the same for a lot of characters.
The whole books was so raw and real and that was what made it so heartbreakingly beautiful.

I think a lot of books try too hard to sound poetic and when reading it you can feel that it's contrived and it just gives me a really off-putting feeling. Rainbow Rowell's, for me, really captured the emotions, while still sounding realistic and natural. You could tell they where really in love with each other, without them making extravagant declarations of love to each other.

I'm not a huge fan of dialogue in books but the dialogue was my favourite in this books. I think I enjoyed it so much because even though it was relatively short and simple, it still spoke volumes. And the dialogue accompanied with the thoughts of the characters (I couldn't think of the word for it...) really helped to carry the message across.

The books was just painfully realistic and raw and that's what made it so beautiful for me. It's so easy to make up something that sounds nice but this book didn't try to do that at all. There's this quote in the book that summarises exactly how I feel about Eleanor and Park:

"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.” ― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

It's hard for me to decide whether or not I like a book that makes me genuinely feel sad but the more I think about, it makes me realise that I haven't read a book like this before and it honestly caught me by surprise and even though this books makes me horribly depressed, it was just too amazing for it not to be one of my favourites.

I don't know how I'm going to get over this book.

x0xo
ash