Eleanor & Parks ~ Rainbow Rowell ☆ Review

Heey!

I’m not sure if you remember, but this book has actually been waiting for me on my shelves for maybe more than a year now.. i’ve been a bit reluctant to read it after some negative reviews i’ve seen *aherm*

What got me into reading this particular one this month is a Goodreads’ group called «Forgotten YA Gems», where it got picked via a members’ voting, for one of the two March Read-Along. Figured i’d join in on the fun as it was clearly waiting for me anyway so.. why not?🙈

Goodread’s page

5 / 5 stars

At first, the fat-shaming toward Eleanor really bothered me.. aswell as both of our characters feeling kinda greh. I was really not sure about this one.

But I kept reading anyway, and as their relationship between Eleanor and Parks grew.. so did my love for them! They reminded me exactly of Finch & Violet from «All our Bright Places».. The relationship between the teens felt so real, an although he was way more “luckier” than her, he would have gave her everything if he had could.

Though having a rather “dark” core in the story; as we are talking spouse abuse & bullying of her kids, the love story itself was everything – I would’ve wanted them to have all the good in the world, hoping so much it wouldn’t go to the separation we feared.

Though I cannot judge if said representation is good or not, this novel has quite some diversity; Park’s family is asian, his mom being Korean; being described as sun-kissed skin or “yellow” by parks himself. We also get to see his struggles into being the only asian at school/his neighborhood. Though it means tonight to her specifically, Eleanor has irish & danish roots; white skinned with really strong ginger hair.