Review- Eleanor & Park

Book- Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Publication Date: February 26th 2013
Genres/Themes: Contemporary, romance, historical, fiction

I wanted to write a review on Eleanor and Park for a very long time. Not only because I disliked this book but because I have so much to say about it. Firstly, I don’t buy into contemporary romance novels, especially when it’s YA. It’s simply because most romance novels are so fake and commercialised. People write romance novels just to get money while feeding the readers’ minds with fantasies and false notion about relationships. Often these books contain creepy stalk-ish behaviour, damsel-in-distress female character, unhealthy obsession over one another, abusive or unrealistic relationships, so much of unnecessary drama, cheesy dialogues and what not that infuriates me. Writing romance novels has become a very easy way to fill pockets with more $$$$ because 1.) It’s easy to write a cheesy romance novel 2.) Women love anything that has a hot guy and swoon-worthy story. Contemporary romance novels in general are poorly written; they don’t live up to the quality of books with interesting plot and good characters.

The only YA romance that I like is Anna and the French Kiss. Yes, I do understand that at times it is really cheesy but the author has realistic approach towards the plot and the characters and romance was not the only part of the plot, there was lot more going on to keep me invested in the story.

Now, going on to Eleanor and Park. I picked up this book out of sheer curiosity. I changed my rating from 2 stars to 1 star later when I realised that I had nothing positive to say about this book.

Let’s start with the male-love interest. Park is a judgemental jerk. When he first meets Eleanor he judges her for the clothes she wears. Park’s mother is Korean and he is ashamed of his mother’s accent, he is also jealous of his younger brother’s “American looks”. He dislikes the way Eleanor dresses and keeps on questioning her style even when it was so obvious that Eleanor was not as rich as him and simply couldn’t afford to buy new clothes.

What surprises me is that being half-Korean living in a white neighbourhood and going to a white school in the 80’s, Park and his brother hardly face racism. Park’s mother being Korean too never faces racism and is very popular among the neighbourhood girls because she’s a makeup artist. I find it hard to believe that Park’s mother easily forgets Korean culture, her family, her country everything for a rich white man and never cares to talk about her childhood or her siblings with her children.

This book is full of one-dimensional characters I never cared about. Eleanor is just another stupid damsel-in-distress female character who was crawling slowly throughout the book. The author tries too hard to make readers sympathise with Eleanor’s character by giving her an abusive step father, 5 siblings and a poor household which seemed too forced in my opinion. Both Eleanor and Park are some of the most boring characters I’ve read about.

The romance between the characters was so rushed and cheesy that I was rolling my eyes the entire time while reading this book. Park hates Eleanor at the first sight and cusses at her then within a span of few pages, he’s all warm and fuzzy towards her saying things like “omgggg her handz r so soft!1!11!!”. Adding to that, these characters smell like desserts and most of the time they want to eat each other because they smell so yummy.

“…But I think it’s got as much to do with your hair being red and your hands being soft … and the fact that you smell like homemade birthday cake”

“Maybe Park had paralyzed her with his ninja magic, his Vulcan handhold, and now he was going to eat her. That would be awesome.”



“Don't bite his face, Eleanor told herself.”

Seriously, is Park strawberry cheesecake that you have the urge to bite every time you see him?

The writing was so cheesy that it made me puke.

“...and his eyes were so green they could turn carbon dioxide into oxygen.”



By the end of this book there are so many loose ends left to resolve, it seems like the author just chose the easy way out to complete the book and send it off to the publisher.

Eleanor and Park is nothing but another cheesy, unrealistic romance novel in the plethora of cheesy, generic romance novels that you should pick up only if you want to waste your time or want to know what a poorly written book is like.