Eleanor & Park - Rainbow Rowell
Began: Tuesday, May 6th 2014
Finished: Wednesday, May 14th 2014
With far too many cuss words to be a young adult novel and far too mushy and gushy to be anything else, I really don't know what to call Eleanor & Park. Anything but a sappy love story, there were many times when reading it that I turned my head and went "what?" and many times when I wanted to throw my head back laughing because this book brings out the nerd in you. At least in me, but I go to a Magnet school and get all the comic book references.
However, I can hardly call this book groundbreaking. I did enjoy it, and thoroughly at that, but would I read it again? Probably not. Because for anyone who has seen more than one CSI: (regular, Miami, or New York), Criminal Minds, or Law & Order SVU knows where this story is going once you hit the middle of the novel. I just feel like it's one of those books that was written to be a movie, and I really hate authors that do that because then they tend to write for the money and what they know will sell versus writing about what they truly feel passionate about.
And as cynical as I may sound, (SPOILER ALERT) I'm happy the book didn't really have a "fairy tale ending" because fairy tale endings don't really happen in real life. Except maybe for Park's parents, but they still yell at each other and get in fights at least five times or more in the novel (which I love, by the way because no marriage is perfect no matter how perfect it may seem on the outside. Every couple will fight about something eventually. It's just inevitable.)
I love how awkward Eleanor and Park's relationship is, but that is coming from the most openly awkward sphere of my existence. It's coming from me hoping that no matter how awkward I am, the perfect boy will just happen to stumble into my life and fall completely head-over-heels in love with me. But the one thing about Rowell's writing (other than the fact that I feel it was written to be a movie) that I didn't like was that the nerdy parts of Eleanor and Park's relationship kind of disintegrated when they became a "couple" of sorts. It was kind of felt like when Rowell was writing this novel, she forgot about that part of their relationship until the last few chapter and then just threw in a few more references.
Quotes
Park: When he touched Eleanor's hand, he recognized her. He knew.
Eleanor: Disintegrated. Like something had gone wrong beaming her onto the Starship Enterprise.
