Eleanor & Park

[goodreads]

Title: Eleanor & Park
Author: Rainbow Rowell
Genre: YA
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 440
Date read: December, 2014

Eleanor is the new girl in town, and with her chaotic family life, her mismatched clothes and unruly red hair, she couldn't stick out more if she tried.

Park is the boy at the back of the bus. Black T-shirts, headphones, head in a book - he thinks he's made himself invisible. But not to Eleanor... never to Eleanor.

Slowly, steadily, through late-night conversations and an ever-growing stack of mix tapes, Eleanor and Park fall for each other. They fall in love the way you do the first time, when you're young, and you feel as if you have nothing and everything to lose.


I recently read and loved "Landline" by RR, and immediately decided I wanted to read more of her work. As I already had "Eleanor & Park" on my kindle, it seemed like the obvious choice.

Unfortuately, as you can see from my rating, it couldn't quite live up to my expectations. I liked it well enough, and thought it very well-written, but I wasn't blown away by it, the way I was by "Landline". It would probably have benefitted from being read first, rather than having to live up to my (admittedly very high) expecations.

The second half was a lot better than the first, though, and I read the last 200 pages in one sitting. I enjoyed seeing how the relationship between Eleanor and Park developed once they allowed themselves to let go, and appreciated that the POV changed between the two constantly. I know not everybody likes a changing POV, but in this case, it really worked for me.