Eleanor & Park
By Rainbow Rowell
Genre: YA Contemporary
Recommended For: Ages 15+ and fans of sweet high school romances with characters who are unique and spunky(yes, adults can love this too). Also, if you’re a big 80’s music fan, you’ll appreciate a lot of the references
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.
The Gist:
Eleanor & Park was my first venture into Rainbow Rowell’s repertoire, and I can see why she has such a large fan base. This book features two very unique characters who each struggle with someone different related to how they look yet find confidence in who they are. Eleanor lives at home with a gaggle of brothers and sisters, a mom knee-deep in denial, and a stepfather who lives for her misery. Park is half-Korean and son of a man who never makes him feel like he can be who he really is-that he is enough. The two are thrown together on the bus and bond over music and comics. The characters have strong voices which makes the story so enjoyable to read. Some of the themes are a bit heavy, so it’s not perfect for a light-hearted read. But overall it’s an enjoyable story with vivid characters you fall in love with immediately.
What I Liked:
The characters made the book for me. Eleanor has some self-image struggles any girl or woman can relate to, yet we get to see how she learns to overcome those internal struggles throughout the book. I loved how Rowell used the two main character’s personality differences to make them a more appealing couple. Their interactions together were realistic without being draining, in the way some teenagers in books are written.
One of the reasons I love YA Contemporary novels is because they usually are centered around a love-story plotline. The adorable romance Rowell created for these two characters was age-appropriate (I hate when teenagers get that my-world-is-nothing-without-you star-eyed lovestruckness right off the bat) and didn’t happen instantly. Rowell used conversations and awkward bus rides to build a foundation for their relationship that felt natural and sweet at the same time.
But I also appreciated that not EVERYTHING was about the love story. Eleanor and Park each had their own dramas going on in their home life and it served as a nice buoy so it didn’t feel like I was drowning in high school puppy love. The drama was intense, but not overwhelming. It definitely affected their relationship, as all drama does, but we saw them work through it. Rowell did a great job of using family dramas at home to add an extra layer to the story that wasn’t so thick it brought everything down.
And the writing style of Rainbow is gorgeous. The text and dialogue is fluid and flows so easily. And the way she describes things, in this book, mainly the way she has each character describe the other character, is truly beautiful and had me falling in love with the characters because I felt like I was seeing the other through their eyes.
What I Didn’t Like:
I think the biggest thing that keeps me from giving this book 5 Lunas is the ending. I get that I am not going to like every ending, but this one was different. It felt rushed. Like all of a sudden I was hit with this big-deal thing and it wrapped up too quickly. I hadn’t even wrapped my head around the seriousness of it before the story was over and I was left asking myself “What just happened?” I didn’t have a satisfied resolution-type feeling when the book ended.
LunasLuckyRating: 4 Lunas
