Rowan

I really enjoyed the flashbacks! Also, Levi's finally here! not like I was waiting for him or anything

2.00 (review changed from 1 star to 2 because I did enjoy reading this book at times and was greatly connected to Park, who was really the saving grace for me.

(3/24/22) If you don't want to read my whole review, reading Eleanor and Park felt like how I imagine having sex with an inexperienced man feels. There were parts that felt good, amazing even, but the overall experience was dragged down by random things said or done that just took me out of the mood. Not to mention there is all this build-up but then the climax is actually really disappointing and doesn't resolve any tension so you have to do it yourself later by fantasizing about what could have been. This analogy just went way further than I meant it to but everything I said still fits.

Okay. Originally I was going to rate this five stars, but now that I've calmed down from high of finishing a book I was invested in, I brought it down to a 1. It was very investing and I really enjoyed the characters snd found them very relatable, especially Park. However, there were multiple parts of the book that made me uncomfortable. For example, when Eleanor says things like “stupid Asian kid.” When they said that Park's mom kept her accent on purpose because his dad liked it, or when they compared her to a doll from The Wizard of Oz if you put it in China Town. I feel like there were just too many moments that were fetishizing Asian people for my comfort. I am not actually Asian though, I am African American, so I can not and do not claim to understand how this feels, but it just made me very uncomfortable. I also kind of feel like nothing was really resolved in the end. I don't think either of them really improved their self-image and we still don't know what actually happened to the rest of Eleanor's family. In the end, I don't really recommend this book, which is quite disappointing because it had so much potential. It really could have been great.