Eleanor & Park

[Meggannakoff]

Disappointed doesn't even cover how I feel about Eleanor & Park. The hype got to me it really really did. I expected a book hangover. I expected to be walking around in a daze after finishing it. I wanted my heart to be ripped out and stomped all over. I feel cheated. I feel like I'm on the outside looking in at everyone comforting each other over how much it crushed them. It was the hype. It had to be the hype.
Okay! Quick summary for those who haven't heard about it. Eleanor & Park is by Rainbow Rowell who seems to be becoming the next John Green. It's split POV between Eleanor, a chubby ginger girl with family problems, and Park, a half Korean boy with self image issues. The story follows them falling for each other while also showing us bits of their school and home life. That's... pretty much it really.
Let's start with the characters. Eleanor. All I can remember is she's chubby with wild, red hair. I don't know what colour her eyes are. I think green? It wasn't mentioned as often as her body type and hair colour though. Those seemed to feature in almost every chapter. I'm also unsure of her interests. I know she likes comics and music but I only know that because both of those things had an effect on their relationship. At one point the book says "He went through bands like Eleanor went through books" and yet a grand total of two books are mentioned. Two. Onto Park! He's Asian. He has black hair. He's Asian. He's pretty. He's Asian. He likes music. Have I mentioned he's Asian? It's mentioned that many times in the book. Even though the book is set in Omaha, 1986, Park doesn't seem to experience any racism. Eleanor makes a bigger deal of it than anyone else. While I'm not 100% sure that it would've been a huge deal, I'm very sure it would've at least been more of a deal than it was. Eleanor was bullied more than Park just for having red hair and being overweight. I don't know. That didn't sit right with me.
Eleanor's family issues. Wow. Talk about underdeveloped. All of it seemed crammed into the last few pages aside from vague mentions scattered throughout the novel. I'm not sure why the author put it in just to leave it so undone. That ending. I'm sorry but that was just weak. There is almost nothing I hate more than a bad ending. Authors owe it to their fans to write a satisfying ending and that was among the most unsatisfying endings I've come across. It's up there with the ending of Mockingjay. It was meh. I didn't feel sad I just felt annoyed. Endings are important and that one sucked.
To be honest, the only real plot point seemed to be their relationship. That is pretty much all the book focuses on, which would be fine if it had been developed well. The relationship was rushed, unrealistic and uncomfortable to read about. There was no slow transition from friends to liking each other to going out. They went from never speaking to acquaintances to maybe barely friends to "I don't like you, I need you". The jump was so fast and so out of nowhere that I actually thought I'd skipped a chapter by accident. I had to go back and check to make sure I hadn't missed something along the way. For a book where the main (*cough* only *cough*) focus is on their love and relationship, it should've been a hell of a lot better developed than that.
It all seemed to come from Park. Held her hand first, dropped the L bomb first, ripped her clothes off first. Near the end, Park goes off on some rant about their love and in her head Eleanor said something about how she never said she loved him. It filled my heart with hope that Rainbow Rowell was going to surprise me and address how uncomfortably fast and, in my opinion, unhealthy their relationship was. I thought that would be the ending everyone was talking about. Safe to say I was disappointed. YA romance novels are so so important. The relationships they portay shape what teenagers expect and hope for in their own relationships. It is so so important that these relationships are addressed properly. Twilight being a shining example. That was an unhealthy and damaging relationship and yet some people still don't see it as such. People still read that and think it's okay when dear lord it wasn't. I felt the same about Eleanor and Park's relationship. There was no between friendship and relationship. They never once talked about whether or not they were dating, Park just assumed they were and Eleanor never said otherwise. The L bomb was dropped way too early. Their dependence on each other was staggering. Lines like "sometimes I think I live for you" are uncomfortable to read. Also the more sexual scenes. Oh my god. I physically cringed. They moved so fast. Even if they had been together a few months (I'm unsure of the timeline), it went from having been very innocent to tearing each other's clothes off. I felt uncomfortable and uneasy for them.
I'd give Eleanor & Park 2 out of 5. The ending left me wanting, the characters were underdeveloped, the story was dull and didn't really go anywhere. The relationship was just bad and unrealistic "god it was like he wanted her to eat his face". Stop. Please. E&P is another book that is just overhyped. I feel so unhappy and empty. Eh.

[gali]

Duplication - there is already a topic open for this book