They agreed about everything important and argued about everything else.”

Set in 1986, Eleanor & Park is the story of two teenagers named Eleanor and Park. They meet on the school bus, when Park somewhat grudgingly asks Eleanor to sit beside him on her first day, and soon develop a relationship that runs deeper than either of them had expected.

Things I like about the book; the use of the comics they read and the mix tapes they make and listen to. It’s a gorgeous way to witness the first flushes of love. Getting the story from the point of view of both characters, I liked knowing what was going on in their heads even when they didn’t know what each other was going through.

Things I didn’t like about the book; that significant parts of what looked like a story different to other YA novels ended up being similar to other YA novels. Namely, the home lives of Eleanor and Park. I understand that some drama was necessary, but this was too much.

Park’s entire relationship with his father seemed like an afterthought designed to keep him from being too perfect.

The abusive step-father storyline has been used in more books than I can count, so it needs to be believable and something about Eleanor’s relationship with her step-father and by extension her family didn’t ring true for me. I could see what Rowell, the author, was doing and why but I wasn’t engaged enough to get absorbed by that aspect of the novel in the same way I did the rest.

My feelings about the ending are equally as mixed. I didn’t like the circumstances that lead to how the novel concludes, but elements of it were so well written they felt like a punch in the gut.