Rainbow Rowell - Eleanor and Park

Two misfits.
One extraordinary love.
Eleanor... Red hair, wrong clothes. Standing behind him until he turns his head. Lying beside him until he wakes up. Making everyone else seem drabber and flatter and never good enough...Eleanor.
Park... He knows she'll love a song before he plays it for her. He laughs at her jokes before she ever gets to the punch line. There's a place on his chest, just below his throat, that makes her want to keep promises...Park.
Set over the course of one school year, this is the story of two star-crossed sixteen-year-olds—smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.

Comment: I wasn't that eager to read this book (it's YA, the genre I tend to stay away from) but I found it with an interesting discount at a book fair in the beginning of the month. Since I managed to read all the books I had planned for June, I started this one (it's not that big in my edition).

This story presents us Park and Eleanor, two teenagers who meet in the bus on the way to school because Eleanor is the new girl and she has no place to sit in the bus except next to Park. 

Eleanor is easily noticeable because she doesn't dress like most girls and her red hair makes her easily spotted too.

However, as the bus travels go on, Park starts to realize Eleanor checks out his comic stories and he feels he should take longer so she could read too before he turns the pages. While others talk or tease or mock os act silly, the two seat partners start to find common tastes to the point Park feels he needs to tell Eleanor what he feels and she does the same. But they both have complicated lives at home, for different reasons. Its their friendship and love that will cement their bond even more...

Generally speaking, this YA story is quite interesting, much more than I anticipated. The focus is a lot more on the two protagonists' lives and relationships and not how they are in love and become moody about those feelings. I'm glad because when I think about teenage drama, very often is too annoying (I've been one so I don't want to relive it) but if the main themes are centered on the daily routines, the expectations, often the need to comply with an idea others have of us, that seems to be more interesting to read about and thankfully, this book is more about that.

There is romance, of course, and it's portrayed in a very cute way. I'm glad it's not all about hormones and being in love and thinking that. I liked these characters had deeper thoughts rather than just attraction and dating.

For most teenagers everywhere, the angst, the fear, the social rules are more often about how to behave, how to be accepted and not about romances. There is too much drama in teenager's relationships but that can also be boring and immature and I prefer to read stories about important themes, as it happened here: Park feels he isn't as well loved by his father and Eleanor has a mother who can't respect herself much less others and has a toxic relationship that affects her children's lives.

The story is told alternatively for the most part, between Eleanor and Park. this style allows the reader to have a pretty good grasp on the timeline and the emotions the characters have. 

Eleanor feels a little more realistic, she is bullied, she doesn't have a safe heaven at home and she personifies a lot of the issues most unpopular kids suffer through during the teenager years. I liked her but at the same time she was characterized a little too cynically for me to feel more empathy towards her. Even while understanding her life situation.

Park did feel cuter, he seemed to be more solid but he is a good example of someone who also vacillates at times in doing the right thing. If only we could be as confident as we want, no matter the age we have... but I'm glad Park was there for Eleanor when it counted the most.

By what we "see" of their lives, especially Eleanor's, we know things might not go towards a very good resolution. I can't tell if the sometimes perceptible vagueness and superficial action scenes are on purpose to make things more difficult to define or to make it harder to have a better idea on everything, but for me there is a little lack of aim and notion of what happens at the end. I don't think leaving things up in the air was a good choice but yes, I get it.

This book feels it hit it perfectly when it comes to portray unpopular people, who must dread going to school to face everything and everyone one more day and how tiring that can be if you don't feel appreciated. I liked this aspect of things.

The romance I could have done without and if the book was only centered on their family issues and personal problems along with a strong friendship between them, I feel it could be better for me and perhaps more captivating in general.

Grade: 7/10

Rainbow Rowell - Attachments

It's 1999 and the internet is still a novelty. At a newspaper office, two colleagues, Beth and Jennifer, e-mail back and forth, discussing their lives in hilarious details, from love troubles to family dramas. And Lincoln, a shy IT guy responsible for monitoring e-mails, spends his hours reading every exchange.
At first their e-mails offer a welcome diversion, but the more he reads, the more he finds himself falling for one of them. By the time Lincoln realises just how head-over-heels he is, it's too late to introduce himself.
After a series of close encounters, Lincoln eventually decides he must follow his heart... and find out if there is such a thing as love before first sight.

Comment: I got interested in this book because I tend to like epistolary novels or books where characters communicate through letters, emails, different means rather than only normal conversation. I had hopes for this book.

In this story we meet Beth and Jennifer, two friends who work at the same newspaper in 1999 and we get to know them through their email conversations. The problem is they use the newspaper internal email to do so, which means their conversations can be seen by the IT personnel.

That person happens to be Lincoln, a young man who's very shy and reserved and whose job is to monitor all emails and to warn people when they are crossing the line. But he feels invested in Beth and Jennifer and even laughs at some of her comments. With time, he realizes he is developing feelings for Beth although he doesn't know her.

The situation gets to a point where Lincoln feels very bad for reading their personal conversations but he thinks they wouldn't accept his invasion of their privacy, even when they are the ones who use the wrong email account for that. Will Lincoln ever come clean to Beth?

After reading this book, I think my consideration for the author has increased. I had only read another book by her and it was a bit too analytical to be as engaging as I imagined. This one is also analytical but the story just captivated me more, I guess. Plus, the narrative is also more interesting and the characters as well.

This story appeals to all of those people who are shy and prefer to talk via email, not having to look directly at someone. Although Lincoln isn't an active part of the conversation, he feels affected by what he reads and he takes steps to change his life because of this as well.

This is one of the things that stayed with me the most after reading this book. I like the funny ideas and comments Beth and Jennifer were exchanging, I felt invested in their choices and experiences and how that got to let me know them as characters, but the real focus here, in my opinion, is Lincoln.

I really think the best part of this book is Lincoln's character. Yes, we get to know Beth and Jennifer and it's very enriching to understand their personalities and dramas through the email exchange but Lincoln is a well developed character to me.

Lincoln is shy and reserved like I said but he isn't scared of going out and doing what he wants. But in terms of personality, I really felt drawn to him. The way he approached life can be seen as too easy and too uncaring by some but I really felt his need to be quiet, to not cause too many waves, to simply life his life as calmly as he could. He also had a bad break up and that affected how he saw others, especially women. I don't think it's easy for most people to accept the idea there are men like this; we assume all men are always confident and truly independent....but I liked Lincoln because he wasn't the common male characters we see in romance, he is a bit more realistic in a way and I really think it was great to have his character the way we did.

This book does feel pretty light and an easy read, but the author was truly clever when she inserted interesting drama and emotional depths to her characters in an almost deceivingly manner. Lincoln isn't just another guy, we get his thoughts for most of the novel and I confess I liked "knowing" him. He lives with his mother for convenient reasons and that causes a certain unbalance in his life and even in his relationship with his sister...but we also get a glimpse of his mother's thoughts at some point, for instance, and aren't they understandable and valid as well? I really liked finding these apparently hidden layers that bring some depth to the whole story.

I can agree when readers say the romance was weak, because the focus wasn't on that exactly. The end was quite obvious but too fast. A few more pages letting us assimilate the passage of time so their relationship could have the sense of being stronger wouldn't have been better, in my opinion. It's good to have out own thoughts about the whole thing but more certainty wouldn't have ruined this book.

All in all, I liked this book, I had a good time reading - even if some parts were sad or almost unbearably realistic for a book labeled fun by some people - and now my faith in the author is restored, I'll look at her work with different eyes for sure.

Grade: 8/10

Rainbow Rowell - Landline

Georgie McCool knows her marriage is in trouble. That it’s been in trouble for a long time. She still loves her husband, Neal, and Neal still loves her, deeply — but that almost seems besides the point now.
Maybe that was always besides the point.
Two days before they’re supposed to visit Neal’s family in Omaha for Christmas, Georgie tells Neal that she can’t go. She’s a TV writer, and something’s come up on her show; she has to stay in Los Angeles. She knows that Neal will be upset with her — Neal is always a little upset with Georgie — but she doesn’t expect to him to pack up the kids and go home without her.
When her husband and the kids leave for the airport, Georgie wonders if she’s finally done it. If she’s ruined everything.
That night, Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past. It’s not time travel, not exactly, but she feels like she’s been given an opportunity to fix her marriage before it starts...
Is that what she’s supposed to do?
Or would Georgie and Neal be better off if their marriage never happened?

Comment: This book wasn't part of my reading plans but as it was chosen for one of my book clubs I decided to give it a try. I was curious about the author's work, considering her fame nowadays and because I have another of her titles in my TBR so I was also interesting in seeing how I would like reading her style.

This is the story of Georgie and Neal's relationship. They met and got together, married and had children but their story, a it happens with so many couples, is also full of misunderstandings, missed expectations and things to concede and to demand.This book is the story of their marriage, of how they fell in love, of the people around them and of how a magical phone helped them cope with what could be the end of their marriage but is actually a chance of trying again.

Days after having finished this, I still don't know exactly how I'd classify my opinion about it. The plot is actually minimal and very quiet. Nothing big actually happens and I can summarize the plot like this: Georgie and Neal have a Christmas vacation planned on his mother's house but Georgie can't go - again - because of work. They seem to reach a stalemate about how their relationship is. Georgie stays, he goes with the kids. But Georgie loves them so she calls and one time, while doing with through her mother's house landline, she comes to the conclusion a Neal from the past is the one talking to her and not her "now" Neal. So Georgie is left with a choice, should she change things so her current life is better, or she should let things be? 

So that was the main plot. Of course, the majority of the book is actually Georgie remembering how her relationship with Neal developed, how work and friends affected the progress of their love and so on. Many things to wonder about and to weight in while managing both work and love.

I got that the main idea in this story is to show how a real marriage works, with so many issues to deal with, of how difficult is to meet expectations and accept to give up things to make the other happy. But this also gave a certain depressing tone to this book and I really had a hard time feeling eager to keep reading. I understand how a marriage is more than a relationship. It's a whole new level of something that two people have to make work and that even little things can amount to problems. But the way the author treated this was more on the hard, challenging side. Of course this is a valid point and it's the author's work, but personally it was too depressing.

Also on the minus column for me was the repeated remembering scenes which are part of the style I know, but they come too close to this being a sort of lovers reunited plot with a twist. The author is free to write the way she wants but for me this turned the story into something even more boring for me. I just couldn't stand reading things going back and forward all the time.

There are revelations which the reader can guess about one of Georgie's friends which I get why it was so, but that in the end didn't really affect Georgie herself, so why it was so ends up not being that important, because Georgie's issues are from another level.

I assume this author's work is very distinct. But based on this, I can't say I'm a fan. I hope that, by dealing with different subjects, the other book I want to read by her isn't as boring or depressing.

This story has an interesting theme, I grant it that. But really, the way the story is told feels so constricted, so forced to look troubled and even accepting the idea of people not dealing with marriage problems in the most considerate or practical way, after all, emotions can't be easily tamed, I still think all this was pushed to drama but without a better execution in terms of storytelling. For me, I mean!

It was interesting how the author chose to put Georgie dealing with her issues, the magical landline is an original way to do it, but did it really accomplish anything besides giving Georgie an opportunity to sort of have therapy? Because I'm confused by how that actually helped the marriage itself and the end still leaves me thinking what actually happened in all this.

There are secondary characters that I found interesting which is great but that, after all things considered, don't have a real importance to impact Georgie and Neal's marriage, which is the aim in this novel.

Anyway, in the end I don't feel impressed. I'm still interested in reading another book by the author but this one so well liked and graded and pimped out didn't feel that special to me...

Grade: 5/10