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review: rooftops of tehran

book info: on sale: now copy from: public library pages: 348 review written: 21.12.17 originally published: 2009 edition read: Penguin NAL 2009 title: Rooftops of Tehran author: Mahbod Seraji In a middle-class neighborhood of Iran's sprawling capital city, 17-year-old Pasha Shahed spends the summer of 1973 on his rooftop with his best friend Ahmed, joking around one minute and asking burning questions about life the next. He also hides a secret love for his beautiful neighbor Zari, who has been betrothed since birth to another man. But the bliss of Pasha and Zari's stolen time together is shattered when Pasha unwittingly acts as a beacon for the Shah's secret police. The violent consequences awaken him to the reality of living under a powerful despot, and lead Zari to make a shocking choice... my thoughts: This book was first published in 2009 and I remember adding it to my list around that time but never actually reading it since I preferred checking out library books to ...
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The Secret

The Secret

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell


Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
Source: Bought Hardcover
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Publication Date: February 26th 2013
Age Genre: Young Adult
Challenges: TBR-Cleaning My Shelves
Challenges: Contemporary  
Two misfits.
One extraordinary love.
Eleanor... Red hair, wrong clothes. Standing 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 ever gets to the punch line. There's a place on his chest, just below his throat, that makes her want to keep promises...Park.
Set over the 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 enough to try.
I joined the Rainbow Rowell bandwagon a while ago, when I read and loved Fangirl, so Eleanor & Park has been on the top of my TBR list for a while now. I was just so darn excited for this one! But from the get-go, this book and I... we didn't click.
It started with the slang. I know, what? Well, this book is set in 1986, right? 1986 slang should be different than contemporary slang. Maybe not by much, and maybe not all of it, but some. And yet, the boys and girls cursed and swore same as they would today. And that bothered me to no end! I wanted to feel like I was in 1986. I didn't.

Then there was the love story. I loved the love story in Fangirl. I expected to be similarly bespelled by Eleanor & Park's. Can you sense the 'but I wasn't?' coming? Because I wasn't. It started out good. Them not talking. Then them starting to kind-of-maybe be friends through comics. Then them saying they need each other---wait, what? Huh?

This is insta love. They know almost nothing of each other. They've known each other for such a short while in which they were talking. I'll buy lust. I'll buy attraction. I'll even totally buy them starting to go out because let's face it, when you're sixteen loving the same comic books can totally be a reason to start dating.

But that excessive "I need you's" and "I live for you's"? Were they necessary at that point? Couldn't they have been pushed back eons and be given at a more appropriate time in the plot, where I could believe them?

From the moment those words were uttered, I was over the romance. Big time. I seriously considered DNFing when this line of dialogues continued, but I was so damn interested in Eleanor's family story. I wanted to know what will happen with this heartbreaking background too damned much to give up on the book.

And the ending? I've seen plenty who hated it. I did too, but not on account of Eleanor & Park. No, I disliked the ending because SPOILER we have no idea what happened to her family. We know from Park's POV that they left Richie (thank god and it's about effing time and good riddance), but we also know through Eleanor's POV that they're not at their uncle's with her, because she doesn't mention them once. The sole reason I read on - and I wasn't satisfied! END SPOILER

All in all, this is not the Rowell book I'd recommend. It's not bad, but it's far from perfect.


Nitzan★

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