Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell, 320 pp, RL: TEEN
Before I dive into the review, I need to applaud Harriet Russell for the cover illustration on Eleanor & Park , designed and art directed by Olga Grlic at St. Martin's Press. It is elegant, distinctive and captures the essence of the characters in the novel in ways that so few covers do. As Rainbow Rowell says about the process of creating the cover art here , "Eleanor would totally read this book." Everything about Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell feels real and immediate, painfully and achingly so. While I managed to spread the experience of reading this breathtaking book out over the course of three weeks (this IS the kind of book you don't want to end, both because it's so good you want it to last forever but also because you know that it will make you cry) I could have easily read it in one sitting. John Green's succinct, praise filled review of Eleanor & Park in New York Times Book Review is impressive coming from someone w