Eleanor & Park [click to buy / read other reviews]
Pages: 336
Genre: YA / Romance
Pubished: 26 February 2013
Book Jacket Summary: 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.
Going into this book, I really knew nothing about this book, outside of the fact that it was a high school romance and that it came with strong recommendations from people whose opinions on literature I greatly value. So, I figured it couldn't be terrible, with such high recommendations.
And with a start like that, it sounds like I hated the book. I didn't; I'm just not sure really how I feel about it. I didn't love it, I can say that outright because when I finish a book I love, I want to read it again and again and with this book, I'm willing to shelf it and not reread it again for several years. I feel like a lot of my issues with the book came with the ending, combined with not being able to really get into one of the main characters' minds. But. Focusing.
Plot: I mostly like it? It's high school and a lot of it was the whole stereotypical high school BS and predictable, but then you get to the romance. And it's so fresh and vibrant and just perfect in all of the ways that a relationship between two weird and outcasted 16 year old kids should be. It's set in the eighties, so there's none of the technology and white noise of the present to get in the way of things (no anonymous texts like in pretty little liars to out your secrets to your abusive stepdad and all), and in all honesty, I found that super refreshing and just wonderful. I read a lot of YA set in modern-day and everything is cell phones to communicate because that's just how it is now and I miss the days of walking over to someone's house and having real conversations with them, face-to-face, especially in fiction.
Then, there was the one night that she was at her biological father's house and they got to have a real conversation on the phone with no one listening and that was probably one of my favorite scenes in the entire book because both Eleanor & Park just got to be themselves.
But, back to plot. It was a little predictable in that the step-parent was the big bad guy and he made everything terrible, but at the same time, finding out that he was despicable enough to write things like "suck me off, bitch" and "slut, you smell like cum," etc. on her TEXTBOOKS? that is just absolutely repulsive. I, personally, saw the big twist that it was him and not Tina coming, but it was still shocking when Eleanor found that note.
Characters: One of the big things with this book is that Park feels like he doesn't know Eleanor. And I, actually, feel the same way. Which, considering half of the book is from her POV should not be the case. It makes sense, in a way, that even though Eleanor is one of the POV characters that we don't really get to go inside her head much, but it really created a HUGE disconnect for me from her and I didn't like that. At all. I loved Park, but I definitely had a hard time physically imagining him. Most of his description is done through Eleanor's eyes / filter and basically, all she says is that he's cute and Asian. And focuses on his hairstyle. To me? Cute + Asian = no, not ever [sorry; personal bias], so I had a lot of trouble with that. In my head, he's often just an olive-skinned oval with hair. Awesome.
I HATE Eleanor's mother. Almost more than I hate her stepdad. Because her stepdad has been raised as the alcoholic, drug-dealing, gun-wielding white trash that he is. Yes, he's evil and I hate him. But Eleanor's mother opted to marry this man after her original marriage fell apart and, while she does still try sometimes for her children, it's obvious that her alliance is with her evil husband and the youngest two kids, rather than the older three. And, coming from a family with major father-issues in the past? That just made me SO MAD, and also made me snap out of the book and right back into the real world. If you have FIVE children, obviously, you wanted to have a family. As a mother, those kids should be your life. Not the husband. If there was one accidental child with the ex, sure. Much more believable. But not like this. When Eleanor hands her mom the $50 she got for Christmas in the store and her mom doesn't even put up a fight, just takes it and spends it? No. No, no, no.
Park's parents are about the only characters I felt were realistic in the entire book. They both freak out at things and his dad is so hard on him for not being the sportsman type like his little brother. His mom freaks out because she's a beautician and Park's girlfriend is anything but dainty and pretty. And it's great. They are great.
Tina is flat until the very end. She's just a bully, but then you find out that her boyfriend wants to kill her stepdad and suddenly in the last 30 pages, she has backstory and depth. And it's never explained. So that's great. And the rest of the characters? Even the ones that are supposed to be important? Feel like they're there as a convenience to the plot.
Writing Stuff / Technical Things: Language. OMG Language in this book. I don't really think it detracted from the book to have all of the swearing, but I also know that it added nothing. Personally, I'm of the belief that swearing in a book needs to have a purpose. And this, most of the time, didn't. The language should have been crude and awful in the notes on the books; that would have had a huge impact... Without all of the other f-bomb dropping throughout the book. As it's written, by the time you see the first note, you're so used to seeing swearing that you're desensitized by it and the note has a far lesser impact on the reader.
I also am not a fan of some of the POV alterations. I do like the stylistic approach that swapping between Eleanor & Park's POVs gave the book, but I also feel like because of that, the reader learned more than Park about Eleanor and because of that, Park got away with things he wouldn't actually be able to because we just forget that he's not there with us. Basically, it made it feel lazy / cheap.
Great Quotes"There are things worse than selfish." [re: the way she feels about her stepdad vs. her real dad who left them because he was selfish]
"You just look like you with the volume turned up." [re: the makeovers]
The Ending: The ending made me so angry. It's unbelievably rushed and absolutely would not happen. Her stepdad raids her room and finds the comics, the mixtapes, her makeup, etc., and realizes that she's been sneaking around with a boy. Eleanor is convinced that he's going to kill her [and honestly, I think he would definitely try] so she runs away. Not only do Tina and Steve help her for NO REASON, but Park's father catches him sneaking out and says OKAY to driving from Omaha to St. Paul, under one condition: he takes the truck and proves he can drive a manual transmission. Which, that is a cute tie-back to the beginning of the book and would be completely plausible if they were going to the next town over, not crossing state lines.
BUT ALSO. His dad asks if she knows that her uncle is going to take her in. He says no. His dad then says "well, if you get there and he doesn't, bring her back to our house and we'll figure things out." NO. YOU ARE A PARENT OF A 16-YEAR-OLD. YOU WOULD TAKE THAT STEP FIRST.
And then the fact that Eleanor just shuts Park out of her life so completely for a year and then sends him a postcard -- the one he originally sent her, back when he was sending her DAILY LETTERS THAT SHE IGNORED -- with three words on it. Rowell leaves them ambiguous, which I kind of liked, tbh. The tone of the postcard arriving [RIGHT as Park is starting to move on, of course] is optimistic and I think you're supposed to assume that the three words are I Love You [or I Miss You, which I prefer because that phrase plays a huge part in the earlier part of the book], but at the same time, it's entirely possible that the postcard says Park, just stop.
Honestly? I almost hope it was the last one. Because a girl that is STUPID enough to do that to a boy that has done nothing but help you and even drove you to runaway from HIM doesn't deserve to be happy. At all. And it enrages me that he even wasted his time trying.
Overall, I'm still not 100% sure how I feel about this book. I gave it 4/5 stars on Goodreads because it's pretty well done and I don't think it's Rowell's fault that I, personally, couldn't connect with Eleanor. I'm still going to stick with 4 out of 5 Stars on this one.
Would I recommend this book? Maybe. Depending on the person. It's not bad, but I don't feel like it's the kind of book I think everyone would love.
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