Eleanor & Park Review

Eleanor & Park
Ranbow Rowell
St. Martin’s Press
February 2013
5/5
Quotes: 

“I want everyone to meet you. You’re my favorite person of all time.”
“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”
“I don’t like you, Park. Sometimes I think I live for you.”
“The first time he’d held her hand, it felt so good that it crowded out all the bad things. It felt better than anything had ever hurt.”
“I miss you, Eleanor. I want to be with you all the time. You’re the smartest girl I’ve ever met, and the funniest, and everything you do surprises me. And I wish I could say that those are the reasons I like you, because that would make me sound like a really evolved human being …‘But I think it’s got as much to do with your hair being red and your hands being soft … and the fact that you smell like homemade birthday cake.”

I can’t believe this book is already more than two years old. It feels like just yesterday when it first came out. This is a book that I believe had a huge hand in making young adult contemporary romance novels popular. Of course, John Green is also the champion of that, but I’d say Rowell is up there with him. Anyway, this is a read that you just shouldn’t miss out on. It makes you feel so many different emotions and you’ll never want it to end.

Eleanor is a new girl who is described as “overweight” and is teased for that and the worn out vibrant clothing she wears. Park is a semi-popular Asian boy who cares more about mixtapes, his walkman, rock music, and comic books, than actually being popular. The story takes place in the 80’s but really the only time you’ll notice it is due to the whole walkman part of the storyline. The rest of the book follows these two characters meeting for the first time on the bus and how the music and comics they end up sharing with each other, ultimately has a major influence in helping them get together. It’s not love at first sight, but the scene where Rowell describes them holding hands for the first time is an extremely memorable moment.

I really love Park’s mom and dad, I think his mom especially gets where Eleanor is coming from. One night, his mom tells Park about all of the struggles that she personally had to go through, seeing Eleanor with her own family, and how she acted around them reminded her of this. Obviously, there’s more characters that you hate then ones that you love. Eleanor and Park are the main focus here and that’s how it should be.

The romance that they have is one that I found particularly heartwarming. Some people say that it isn’t realistic, but I love that what brought them together was comic books and music. Park naturally says some of the sweetest lines in Young Adult book history and you can’t help but see exactly why Eleanor fell for him in the first place. Yes, they might be young, but the love they have for each other shines through the pages nonetheless.

I recommend this book to anyone regardless of how old they might be. I think this is a book with Adult crossover potential because of how universal the events that happen to them are. Yeah, there are other books that also have common teen issues, but I just have never seen it written so naturally and accurate as this one.