noumiboobi's reviews
100 reviews

This book had so much potential, it really did. But damn it, did it fall short. What I hated about this can be summarized in two points.
racism.
the absence of depth & development in the characters

I’ll start with that because it can’t go unmentioned. Yes, the story takes place in 1986. Yes racism was present in these times. Were all the racist remarks and undertones in this justified because of that? Absolutely not. I hated the way Eleanor sees Park’s korean heritage. It just feels like the author fetishized asian people and puts them all as one. It felt reductive. I obviously can’t say much about it as a caucasian woman, but it just fell so flat and came off ignorant as hell.

I was also disappointed with how flat the characters were.
Eleanor has so much going on around her, she has a very hard background, she could’ve been so much more. She was so frustrating because we never really understood her or her mood swings, and she never quite evolved or matured. She had potential but she ended up being just there. And annoying at times.
Park also lacked depth. I feel like we could’ve gotten more from him, more than his feelings from Eleanor or wishing he wasn’t asian. Park should've had some kind of development, some acceptance towards himself.

All in all though, I still enjoyed this read. It fell flat in many ways but the writing was poetic and really engaging. I found myself invested in Eleanor and Park’s relationship, and wished they had more. I feel like there were some uneventful bits that could’ve been skipped but the last 20 pages were very engaging, it really feels like an ending and so much goes on it gets addictive. The romance is very sweet, very first love, very heartwarming at times. It did move very fast for me, but I remember my teen years and how fast everything seemed so I get it.

That’s why I award this overrated book a well-deserved, mid, humbling 3 stars.