A few students from my school had the chance to go to Russia for a few days last week, together with a group from another school. We took the ferry from Helsinki on Wednesday night and arrived the next morning in Saint Petersburg. 

 

That day we didn't really go see anything together, instead we had orienteering in smaller groups, so we walked a lot through the city searching for some places, and at the same time we obviously saw quite a lot of the town. At the end of the day we had dinner together at a Caucasian restaurant.

 

 

When I started reading this book, I expected it to be a cute love story, but it's so much more than that. Eleanor & Park is a young adult book about first love, difficult family relations and being an outsider. We get to experience how these two characters - who are complete opposites, fall in love, how difficult the life as a teenager can be and how unfair life sometimes is. Rainbow Rowell, the author of the novel, really doesn't sugarcoat anything, she's real and writes about things in a realistic way, no matter how harsh it might be. 

 

The novel isn't just 225 pages of sadness. It also shows us how there can be some kindness in the world when everything is bad. Rowell is amazingly good at describing what it feels like to fall in love. What it feels like to hold hands, and to kiss for the first time. It really is a beautiful, beautiful story. 

 

I feel like no review is good enough for this book. I also feel like the less you know about the book, the better your reading experience will be. I personally couldn't stop reading this book, once I got into it. It made me smile, it made me cry, it made me feel butterflies in my heart. And I still, months after finishing it, think a lot about this book and the characters.