Love between teenagers in high schools are always memorable. The book Eleanor and Park is just that kind of story, about a boy and a girl’s first love. It is a fictional novel written by Rainbow Rowell. The theme is love, being young, experiencing the sweetness and also bitterness of love for the first time.

Park was the only person on the school bus willing to offer the new girl a seat. The new girl in town, Eleanor, was quite a strange person, with all those mismatched clothes and crazy red hair, and chaotic family life; Park was a quite ordinary boy from a warm family. Park and Eleanor just sat in silence everyday on the bus, pretending not to see each other. The two of them seemed impossible to have common topic. But things started to change when they happened to read comics together on bus, silently. And just as marvelous as that, they fell in love. Once the love began, it was like flood and can’t be stopped…

The way of telling the story in this book is very interesting. In each chapter there are small parts, one part is form the perspective of Park, the next is from Eleanor, then the next is back to Park again… So the story is like twining between the two characters, we can not only see Park’s thought but also Eleanor’s, like looking one story in different perspective. It makes the whole storyline more three-dimensional.

The style of writing in this book is simple and succinct, with lots of daily conversations and descriptions of daily life. The things happening in the story are just true and familiar, since the setting is very close to our own life: in school. The whole book gives you a light and relaxed feeling. However, it is not always light and relaxing, there are also obstacles and problems facing Eleanor and Park, which they will have to find ways to solve them.
The main theme in this story, except for the memorable first love, is to persist yourself, don’t change yourself easily just for others. Just like Eleanor would not change her style of hair and clothes, because that is her, that is the real Eleanor and what makes Eleanor unique; And to fight for the right thing, for what you can achieve, especially in this age when you are young, when you “have nothing and anything to lose.”. Like park trying to change the situation of bulling in school, trying to help Eleanor get away from the crazy stepdad …

The ending of the book leaves us space to imagine. It is like an open ending, with no definite things stated, so we can use our own imagination to think about the story of Eleanor and park, about what will happen to them next…

I can recommend this book to my classmates who are interested in love stories. But I will not recommend it to any friends younger because the book contains some strong languages.