Eleanor & Park

By Nora

Eleanor & Park was amazing. Like, finish in three days, amazing. At first, I was kind of annoyed by Eleanor.

"I'm so fat and life is awful and blah blah blah"

But as the story moved along, I began to love her. The unfortunate situation with her family made me sympathize for her like crazy. And then there was Park. When I brought Eleanor & Park to
school, two of my K-Pop-obsessed friends wondered if there was any reference to J-Park (a K-Pop star that they love). I told them no, except that he was half Korean. Besides, the book is set in the 80's. Where am I going with this? Blah.

Anyway, the two really captured my heart and I couldn't put the book down. The perfect ratio of sadness and humor was quite astonishing and the music references were just splendid (Did I just say 'splendid'?).

Why do all stand-alone books have to have sad endings? I mean, come on! After reading The Fault in Our Stars (which was too depressing to even think about before bursting into tears), I was really hoping that this would be a happy, cheerful book. I guess I was wrong.

I may have mentioned (I think I did...maybe not...), an author at the NYC Teen Author Festival came up to me and told me she would mug me for my copy of Eleanor & Park. They had sold out. But now I see why. I'd probably do that, too. :)

-Nora