Rainbow Rowell meets Star Wars.

So first, funny story. I’m sure many of you have similar ones, but I’mm’a share anyway. I ordered my copy of this book from Book Depository. I paid $4.18, for shipping I assumed, since World Book Day books are free. I was fine with this. I waited weeeeeks for my copy to get here, as it was coming from the UK; luckily a friend with a similar problem sent me a copy by mail so I got to read this before my copies arrived. Yes, copies. Plural.

I HAVE SO MANY COPIES OF THIS BOOK. They didn’t ship me one book. They shipped me one package of books. There were like, forty books in there at least. (I didn’t actually count.)

Luckily, the week I received them, I was set to go to a Rainbow Rowell signing/speaking event in Tempe, so I just brought a crap ton of them (though I still have about fourteen left) and passed them out before she started talking. (Sidenote: If you ever have a chance to see her speak in person, do it. She will say she’s nervous and bad at it, but she is just as smart and sincere and funny and compassionate in person as she is in writing.)

Anyway this book. It was too short, Rainbow. Too short! That’s really my only complaint. I wanted more of it.

I don’t want to say too much because it is so short, and saying much would really spoil the whole thing. Basically all you need to know going in is that Elena loves Star Wars, and decides to wait in line to see The Force Awakens. She wants to be part of the grand tradition. Only, things don’t turn out like she expects.

Par for the course for RR’s writing, the characters are wonderful, their dialogue is so thick and scrumptious you can snack on it, and even in the short space of this story, she manages to grab your emotions and force you to become involved.

At the signing, she mentioned that she’s taking a (well deserved) writing break for now. I believe she’s still writing, but nothing is in the pipeline as of yet. That is tortuous to me. But honestly, if this is what she needs to do in order to keep churning out books I will give five stars to, I will support her 1000%.

(She also mentioned that she has an outline for an Eleanor & Park sequel that she developed before the book was even published, but shhh because she doesn’t know if she will ever actually write it.)

(Also she will more than likely write another book about Baz and Simon.)