Book Blog #138: Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Title: Eleanor & Park

Author: Rainbow Rowell

# of Pages: 328 (hardback)

Genre: YA, Romance, Contemporary 

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Synopsis: 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.

Review: I should have known I wasn't going to like this book.

At first, I couldn't remember why I didn't buy this book earlier; it was in the popular young adult novel section, and it received so many good reviews! But when I got home, I found the reason.

It changes point of view.

But I had to give it an honest try. And I really did try to like it. But I couldn't. The story is way too shallow, Eleanor annoyed the crap out of me, and the ending was disappointing.

Eleanor needs to grow a little backbone. She cries way too much and is super sensitive to what Park says. Sure, Richie is screwing up her family life, but everyone needs to find a way to deal with the problems they face in life.

She becomes so upset when she finds out Park had dated Tina! She seems so unreasonable; the past is the past, and Park chose her! Overall, there's a lot of teen angst...

"I'm sorry that things aren't perfect here all the time for you...But this is our life now. You can't keep throwing tantrums about it, you can't keep trying to undermine this family \ I won't let you.'" -Eleanor's mom, page 187.

Even though these are harsh words to hear from her mom, they really show what I'm trying to get at. Whining and moaning about her life (example: she keeps mentioning how Richie sent her away for a year) isn't going to get Eleanor anywhere; she has to grow up a little.

Shortly after Eleanor's mother tells her this:

"Eleanor put the wadded-up fifty in her mother's hand. Her mother didn't even thank her." -pg 187

Is she trying to play the victim here? Is she trying to buy some pity from her mother by giving her the money? It's not even her money that she earned; it was Richie's money a half an hour earlier.

This book did not impress me at all. Not recommended.