Author: Rainbow Rowell

AR Level: 3.8

Miss Library Lady Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

**NOTE: Eleanor & Park will NOT be available at Yolo’s library due to mature content**

I just can’t form words to describe this book.  Despite the rave reviews on Amazon, B&N, and Good Reads, I thought the book fell flat.  The author spent so much time building up the characters that she seemed to forget about the story itself.  I pushed myself to read it in it’s entirety though due to it’s popularity and in hopes the ending would tie it all together.  Atlas, it did not; I wanted to throw my Kindle at the wall!  Everyone has their own likes and dislikes though, so don’t let me review discourage you from reading this book.  I’ve included a review from Amazon that I think gives a great description of Eleanor & Park.

 

Borrowed from Bethany Gronberg‘s review on Amazon.com

Set in 1986, Eleanor & Park is funny and sad, sarcastic and sincere, and above all geeky. The title characters are both 16-year-old misfits in their working-class Omaha neighborhood. Park is half-Korean in a mostly-white part of town, and is into alternative music and comic books, unlike his brother and dad who are into sports. Eleanor is big (she thinks of herself as fat) and awkward and poor, the oldest of five kids with a painfully difficult home life, and defiantly flaunts her crazy red hair and weird clothes.

They find themselves sitting together on the school bus every day. Over time they’re reluctantly drawn together by sharing Park’s X-Men and Watchmen comic books. Despite their friends’ derision and their families’ dismay and disapproval, they fall in love over mix tapes featuring The Cure and the Smiths. A larger, more dangerous threat looms over one of them, skillfully woven throughout the story and coming to a climax in a way that will have you reading faster and faster to find out what happens. (or just to get it over with *my  added note)