#43 (2013/CBR5) "Eleanor & Park" by Rainbow Rowell

Rainbow Rowell became one of my to-read authors as soon as I read Attachments. So, I was pretty excited when I was finally able to pick up Eleanor & Park (2013) from the library. I started reading it immediately.

Eleanor has just moved to a new high school. She is overweight, unfashionable, and antisocial. Her family life at home is not good, to say the least. She sits next to Park, a half-Asian kid, on the bus because she has no other options. And slowly, very slowly, the two develop a relationship. Their relationship is sweet, and their lives are realistic. I enjoyed reading it.

A lot of people have already read and reviewed this book, so I really don't have much to add. I liked this book. I like that the characters feel like real high school kids, and their relationship fit their age and emotional maturity. Eleanor's home life was incredibly disturbing. I could feel how trapped, isolated, and helpless she felt. My god, adolescence is hard enough without adding on all that other crap she had to deal with. My stomach started hurting whenever she went home, and I couldn't even imagine functioning under the emotional stress and lack of support that she had to deal with.. In that way, this one felt much darker than Attachments. I'm not sure if I could pick a favorite from the two, though. I can relate more to the characters from Attachments because I'm not a kid anymore, but Eleanor and Park are such interesting characters. I'm looking forward to reading Rowell's latest.