Eleanor & Park

It was like their lives were overlapping lines, like they had their own gravity. Usually, that serendipity thing felt like the nicest thing the universe had ever done for her.

I had avoided this book for so long because everybody was talking about loving it which raised my expectations through the roof, so I was afraid that it wouldn't live up to the hype. I was wrong. It was incredibly heart-warming and heat-breaking at the same time. The writing is beautiful. Both the plot and the character development are very well done.

Eleanor and Park's relationship was so terribly sweet. It reminded me about my first love. Though there was one moment when Park was being a little melodramatic about missing her during weekends when they couldn't see each other and I rolled my eyes thinking “cheesy much?”. Then I remembered this e-mail I got from the boy I was in love with in high-school. His message sounded like it was the end of the world that we couldn't see each other (we lived in different towns and barely saw each other throughout our entire relationship). I was a mess when I read that. I printed it out and carried that paper with me everywhere and read it over and over again. This is really what the first love is like for a lot of people. It's this innocent yet epic emotional experience that you can cherish forever.

Jeez, look at me sounding like a sappy old lady. I am indeed sappy. But not that old. And I was lucky enough to find later an even greater love, the kind of love that you grow old with. Probably that's why the ending didn't ruin the book for me, even though I was bawling my eyes. Because I know that wonderful still await you later in life.

Back to the book, Eleanor and Park's relationship is not the only thing I loved. I appreciated that it tried to tackle bullying and the reality surrounding the two households. I loved the way the author handled their relationships with their family members and the other kids at their school. Though I would have liked to see a clearer resolution for the bullying and also to what happened with her mother and her siblings.

I loved both Eleanor and Park. A lot of people complain about finding Eleanor irritating, but I think they just can't understand her predicament. Even though Eleanor was stubborn and moody I did not find her annoying. Her broken household is totally the reason behind her frequent defensive grouchiness. And honestly, I can't blame her. I can totally see why she acted that way. I feel she handled her entire situation way better than most teenagers would have. Park was kindhearted and so adorable. It felt right when they were together.

Not much else to say other than this has gained a well deserved spot on my all-time favorites.

I have heard SO much about this book. And it was fine – definitely everything promised: a sweet romance between two non-conventional leads, which brought diversity to the world of YA realistic romance. But the biggest problem I always have with Rowell books is the romance – it's too sappy, too sudden, too forced – and this book is mostly romance. (Also, Eleanor's abusive family, which is very sad and a little over the top.) So, a good book, but not for me.

Rainbow Rowell once again successfully put my emotions in a blender and made a gross, goopy, tear filled smoothie out of them. My husband watched me reading this book and I'm certain he was concerned. The few hours it took me to read this were the most emotional I've had in a long time. IT WAS PERFECT.

I'll be quite honest — I didn't expect to like Eleanor and Park very much when I started it. I read it on the advice/orders of my girlfriend, and expected it to be a teen romance novel much in the same way I expected the Maze Runner trilogy to be a teenage dystopian novel — very much of its genre, tweaking only small details, with stories interchangeable to an almost shocking degree. But it surprised me. It didn't invert, contravene and confound the trappings of the teen novel the way some of my favorite genre books subvert theirs, but it really worked for me. I cared about the characters, and I cared about what happened to them.

Read the full review here.

Particularmente não sei muito bem o que dizer desse livro. Li MUITO rápido (por ser uma leitura fácil é claro) mas por ser interessante. É simples a história. traduzindo.. é tão bonitinhoooooo
Confesso que na minha ignorância jamais imaginei que Park era coreano (mestiço, mas ainda assim, minha gente, acho que é o primeiro livro em que o “príncipe da história é um mestiço, metaleiro, com olhos verdes: amei) e o primeiro livro (talvez a exceção de bridget jones) que é verdadeiramente gordinha, e não é a diva da escola, a musa e coisas assim.
Surtei em muitos momentos com toda a história, com a fofura. Alguns momentos perdi a cabeça com reações como “oi? por que ela não fala logo a verdade para ele? a verdade de tudo? por que usa as roupas de menino, por que não tem nada em casa, porque tem medo de aprensetá-lo... tudo. facilitava o livro”. Ou, quando ela falava da bela mãe dela, que era uma imbecil, “por que ela não larga logo esse canalha?”, mesmo com um filho ela tinha mais QUATRO na bagagem que mereciam um pai melhor que aquilo. (spoiler: e o que raios aconteceu com a família afinal?).
Achei a estrutura das personagens bem delineadas, estruturadas, merecedoras de uma continuação.
Não é um livor que muda vidas, mas que faz pessoas que são acima do peso (o/) ter fé de que é possível ter um conto de fadas mesmo que meio aluado (o amor incondicional do menino, que uma psicólogo mais aenta diria que ele tem aqueles transtornos compulsivos possessivos de querer matar a todos apenas para a amada ser feliz...)
E faltou o reencontro deles.
R. Rowell é amável em sua escrita e sou a favor de mais livros dela! \o/

“Parce que les gens aiment se rappeler ce que c'est d'être jeunes, et amoureux ?”

Je n'ai pas réussi à lâcher ce livre du tout, engloutissant quelques précieuses heures de sommeil. Je me suis inquiété pour Eleanor, souris à leur histoire commune, versé de sérieuses larmes face à une fin que je n'attendais pas du tout, ... C'était un moment vraiment très beau, tout en étant à la fois extrêmement juste en évitant d'être édulcoré, le tout rythmé par de superbes chansons que l'on prends énormément de plaisir à redécouvrir. Un roman qui ne ment pas sur les sentiments ni sur certaines réalités.

To me, their story felt real.
Their story was real. And just like in real life, the first love isn't always the last.
More like 4.5 but yeah
That ending tho.. this book was supposed to be cute and funny and sweet and whatever.. Park is a sweetheart anyway and I kind of liked Eleanor. I understood her insecurities even though they were annoying sometimes. She didn't deserve the family she had to live with, and I never really liked her mother. Not to mention Richie. But people like him do exist and that's the sad part.. I don't feel attached to her siblings whatsoever, but again, can't really blame them when their mother was a coward.
I was ok with Park's family, the fact that they, specifically his father, understood that he is a little bit different made me like them even more. But yeah, all in all, I like the book and I definitely wasn't expecting it to end the way it did, after I read Fangirl and the ending was so cute. But a change is always good and I feel like Rainbow Rowell just got a place on the list of my favorite YA authors.

She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.