"If you couldn't save your own life, was it even worth saving?" (Rowell 310).

4 star? Yes 4 because I didn't like the ending. I didn't understand Eleanor's negative outlook but I thought the ending was very creative and well done. It did feel a little fushed.

I'm still sniffling because I cried through the final 30 pages. This book was so, so lovely. The beginning was just the most adorable thing, and I loved the romance between Eleanor and Park. I did think it was weird how Park abandoned his friends to only hang out with Eleanor, but it kind of made sense because they were in high school and were basically obsessed with each other. Eleanor's backstory was so heartbreaking and Park's was super realistic- I liked that it wasn't that they had opposite family lives. The writing was really well done too. It was vivid and fresh and full of so many amazing ways to describe indescribable feelings while still being suited to the YA age range. Basically this was beautiful and perfect and I am such a sucker for love.

Wanted to love this book, but I felt that it just fell short in many respects.
Park was too perfect and always did the right thing. Eleanor was constantly considering herself fat/gross/*negative* (which did make her much more realistic and relatable) but was so against Park defending her, and gave mixed messages about caring about the bad things written on her books.
Didn't catch many of the 80s music references, just a bit before my time, not a bad thing about the book, just my comment.
Plot was a major weakness here. I felt that there was a lack of tension driving the book forward. Yes, there were the dirty comments on her books, but I thought it felt like the decision to make that a big point was sloppy/sudden/didn't make a ton of sense. Eleanor's home situation came across to me as sad, and sometimes scary, but the domestic violence I thought was not directed at the children. So Eleanor "realizing" that her stepdad was suddenly after her to hurt her/sexually assault her felt jarring to me. Not because I'm naive but because the only precedent in the book to these feelings is her desire to bathe quickly while he's not around, which makes perfect effing sense when there's no DOOR. To me, this sudden semi-climax/plot contrivance was unexpected, unsupported, and unsatisfying. The language used throughout the book is enough to be rated R, but there can't be any sort of act here to make Eleanor leave? Feels to me like Rowell just was pulling punches.
Along the same lines, I had to roll my eyes a couple of times at the actions of Park and Eleanor, or lack thereof. This is a well-crafted tale of the two falling for each other--as in, I had feels and enjoyed their slowly falling for each other. But these are two teenagers and their story over the course of 9ish months, and they take forever and a day to even kiss, then there are like two make out sessions. I understand that the characters were written with shy-ish personalities, they were 16, they needed to sneak around, and that Eleanor was self-conscious, but I just thought it was unrealistic for the physical aspect of their relationship to progress so little/slowly. I'm not saying that the decision to not have sex at the end didn't make sense or that that was out of character--with their rate of progress, sex was pretty far off--just that I thought it took a long time to get that ball rolling and it was rolling pretty slowly throughout. That being said, I loved the descriptions of what it was like the first time they held hands, kissed, touched, etc.
Side note: also thought some of the physical aspects were lacking in Rowell's Fangirl despite those characters being college age and away at college.... maybe Rowell just doesn't like to write physical scenes??
The audiobook narrators were enjoyable overall, but I thought the guy who read Park made Eleanor's voice super girly and young, and frequently didn't make her snarky sarcasm clear.
The issues of race were interesting, but I felt like that race could have been a much bigger deal in Park's self-concept and therefore in his character development. It's almost as if there was a subplot in the book that explored this aspect of Park and had something to do with his mom, but that it was cut. There were shades of discussion that could have been really interesting to explore but were phased out.