Eleanor & Park - Rainbow Rowell

But what were the three words?  That is the question plaguing me after this one.  There's an obvious guess, but with Rainbow Rowell, can we ever really know?  (She actually has an answer to this up on her FAQ but is it real or not?)

Anyway.  This is a young adult romance novel about the two titular characters, Eleanor and Park.  I don't remember either of their last names, if they were ever mentioned.  Eleanor is on the heavy side, and big in general.  She's just starting a new school after her mother retrieves her from the family friends she's been living with for the past year, ever since her abusive stepfather threw her out.  Her mother and stepfather are still together, though, and Eleanor shares a small bedroom with her five siblings, has no privacy, is bullied at school, and is generally miserable.  Park is half-Korean, an oddity in their town, and is into comic books and music.  When Eleanor sits next to him on the bus, they form a wary truce, then a strange friendship, and eventually a romance.

Both characters are sixteen, sophomores in high school, and, as the book blurb says, "smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts."  There's a sense of inevitability about their relationship because of that, and one that seems to play out at several parts of the book.  And it's kind of heartbreaking, in more than one sense.  Eleanor's home life is absolutely terrible.  Her stepfather isn't physically abusive towards her, as it's suggested he is towards her mother, but he's definitely emotionally and mentally abusive towards the whole family, has rage and alcohol issues, and generally makes life hell for Eleanor and her siblings.  Pair that with the bullying Eleanor gets at school, for being big and redheaded, and life is pretty awful for her in general.  Park is a light in her life.  And while Park genuinely does care about Eleanor, he's just not as interesting of a character.  His race isn't really an issue in the book--not that it has to be, but it would be the obviously bullying point of Rowell had chosen to go in that direction, which she didn't--his family is pretty nice in general, and his biggest worry other than Eleanor seems to be learning to drive a stick shift so that he can get his license.  Now, I don't think both main characters needed to have bad lives; that would have made for a very dark and downer book, and probably not one for the audience Rowell was aiming for.  But I just didn't care as much about Park, because I didn't need to.  He was fine, so I could focus my emotional efforts on Eleanor, and I think Park as a character suffered because of that.

I listened to this as an audiobook.  I think the narrators fit the characters pretty well, which was nice.  Eleanor's narrator is the same woman who narrated Dark Places, which was kind of a weird mental disconnect for most of the book because DP and E&P differ so much in content, but that kind of came full circle toward the end of the book.  Some of the voices they do for different characters are goofy, and I continue to lament that not all audiobooks are done with an ensemble cast for every character who speaks.  Sigh.

But yes, an enjoyable young adult romance.  I think people who like comics and the types of music that the characters listen to would like this, too, because it's kind of unusual in books.

4 stars out of 5.

Landline - Rainbow Rowell

When I went to pull the cover art for this from Goodreads, a book that I recognized popped up under the "Readers Also Enjoyed" section: Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephanie Perkins.  For a moment, I was perplexed; Isla is a decidedly young adult book and Landline, while not explicit, is definitely aimed at a more adult audience.  But after a bit of reflection, I saw the connection.  Both of these books deal with the building and disassembling of relationships, with life just getting in the way, and of the couple--sometimes one party more than another--striving to make things right, often in each other's absence.

In Landline, Georgie is a comedy writer on the verge of a big break.  She and her long-time writing partner, Seth, have the opportunity to finally create the show they've been working on for nearly two decades.  The problem with this?  They need to do a massive amount of work to get it off the ground, and they need to do it when Georgie is supposed to be going to her mother-in-law's house for Christmas with her husband and two daughters.  Georgie has a habit of putting work before her family, and this is one straw much.  Her husband, Neal, packs up the girls and goes without her, leaving Georgie alone in Los Angeles.  Georgie throws herself into work, but the rift between her and Neal eats away at her, especially because Neal isn't answering her calls.  When her own cellphone dies--as it does whenever it's not plugged in--she calls Neal's mother's house from an old rotary phone she bought while she was still living with her mother, and gets a surprise.  While she can talk to Neal, it's not her Neal that she's talking to--it's Neal from almost two decades ago.  And so Georgie wonders if this is a sign: is she supposed to use her connection to past-Neal to change their relationship before it becomes too late?

This is a sweet novel.  It's set up very well to allow the story to flow while also filling in all of the background information that you really need in order to emotionally connect with the characters.  The current timeline is interspersed with long periods of Georgie thinking about earlier times in the relationship--not necessarily flashbacks, because they still read like real narrative, but definitely backstory.  This lets us see how Neal and Georgie have changed as time went on, and how they've come to grow apart, as well as how they used to--and still do--fit together.

I will have to say, though, that I'm not entirely satisfied with the ending here.  The "magical phone to the past" thing is never explained--possibly because how do you explain something like that, but still, I would have liked a stab at it.  And then...I'm not necessarily sure that Georgie and Neal should be together, and the sickly-sweetness of the ending turned my stomach a little.  I think I would have liked a more bittersweet ending on this one; it would have fit the overall tone of the novel better.  One of those "I hate it but I love it" endings, you know?  Anyway, I did really like this overall; it's a light, fast read, but one that still had plenty of emotion, and I'd definitely read Rowell's other books.

4 stars out of 5.