Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

I don't even know where to start.  I couldn't pick out a book to listen to, so I had my coworker pick a book for me about 3 or so months ago?  Maybe, it was close to that.  Anyway, she picked Eleanor & Park.  It was slow to get started and I've been listening to it for a while, but I listened to a lot of it (basically the last half) over the past week or so and finished it.  Now that I've mopped my heart up off the floor using my tears, I'm writing a review.

This book is about love and how sometimes it finds us.  It's set in the mid-1980's.  Eleanor is a self-described chubby girl who has had a rough life.  She lives with her mom and jerk of a stepdad (I cannot even tell you how much I detested him in this book, but his presence was unfortunately very necessary) in a too-small house.  Park is one of the only Asian kids in Omaha and kind of a loaner, but slides over and lets Eleanor sit next to him on the bus the first day she attends his school.  

He doesn't like her and she doesn't like him.  Eventually, though, they discover a shared love of music.  They begin by talking about some music on the bus and their lives interacting continue from there.  Slowly, the begin to become friends.  Then they begin to care for one another.  Then, slowly and without really realizing it, they fall in love.  

Sometimes love is instant and sometimes it builds slowly over time when you realize there is another person in the world that makes you feel like you aren't the only person on this planet full of people.  The "me too" kind of love. This is that kind of a build-up.  She makes the world brighter for him and he makes the world a better place for her.  

They had an instant connection, but don't really realize it until much later when their walls against the world have changed.  Instead of the walls coming down, and them letting the world in, they more so merged their walls and gave access to each other.  It was sweet.  But not in a fairytale love story kind of way.  In a real, raw way filled with flawed people who chose to see each others flaws not as burdens but as part of the reason they love each other.

I absolutely loved reading their story.  It had alternating points of view which I have always thought I didn't like, but have grown to love when it is done well.  

Then the end came.  UGH.  I hated it and loved it at the same time.  I hated it because, well, just read the book, but I loved it because love always finds a way.

I love quotes and here are a few favorites from the book:

“And because I’m so out of control, I can’t help myself. I’m not even mine anymore, I’m yours, and what if you decide that you don’t want me? How could you want me like I want you?” 

“He made her feel like more than the sum of her parts.” 

“I just can’t believe that life would give us to each other,’ he said, ‘and then take it back.’
‘I can,’ she said. ‘Life’s a bastard.”"

But it's up to us..." he said softly. "It's up to us not to lose this.”  

I think listening to it was extra awesome because I loved the narrators for both characters.

328 pages/8hrs56min

(Ok, so there's more: there is a part in the book where they could have sex, but they don't and the reason why is one of the most adorable things I've ever read.  But there's a hand-holding scene and Oh My Gosh.  Rainbow Rowell even tweeted, "Also, DreamWorks has assured me they're committed to filming Hollywood's first R-rated hand-holding scene."  Here's a tiny bit of it: Holding Eleanor’s hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive. As soon as he touched her, he wondered how he’d gone this long without doing it. He rubbed his thumb through her palm and up her fingers, and was aware of her every breath.  Later in the book she says that holding his hand for the first time felt better than anything and crowded out all the bad.)