Eleanor and Park: Review and Response

So recently, as part of my 2014 Reading Challenge, I read Eleanor and Park.
It was one of those books that you've heard the title of time and time again.
People everywhere seem to be reading it and loving it.
I, however, didn't quite feel the same.

WARNING: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS

The book follows a young couple, a boy and a girl, and their story of first love with each other. They both have their own problems to deal with and so they find comfort in each other. I thought the beginning was sweet and really promising. I loved how Park started, without speaking to her, leaving comic books on her seat or making her mix tapes. Their love blossomed in a really cute, caring way.

I found Eleanor to be really blunt, almost uncaring. She makes great effort to put up barriers and push people away. She can't be polite enough to accept people's kindness with good grace. As a character she was really hard to like. I hated how her weight and appearance were constantly mentioned. I felt that this work was, perhaps, somewhat semi-autobiographical based on things that Rowell has said of the book. I just didn't connect well with either Eleanor or Park. Also I didn't really get their romance. It felt really forced. If I were Park, I'd have totally given up all of my patience with Eleanor. She constantly makes things difficult and creates friction between them.

Park, as a character, had so much untapped potential. His half Korean heritage wasn't really explored even though he was living in the 80s and people probably weren't all too accepting. This wasn't really explored and his mother, at times, seemed like a negative cliché portrait. Park's mother was a really tragic character whose culture and identity have been highly erased: even her children don't know much about her life before coming to America and being forced to assimilate into Western culture.

The end was so anti climatic. I think that this is my main problem with the book. What I really didn't like was that Eleanor didn't ever think about her family, the safety of her mother or siblings, she just left. She simply thought to protect herself and left the rest of her family in an unsafe space. She then cut Park off completely. As a character it felt like she was very selfish, never taking the feelings of others into consideration. I spent so long waiting for this big tension and nothing happens. Eleanor just leaves in the last 50 pages. There's no tension or relief. The book just fell flat and, when I finished reading, I had that horrible question flash through my mind: Is that all there is? For a book that had so many glowing reviews, I found them to be utterly unfounded. This book was so promising, and it started so well, but fell flat so hard.