Here is one of the blurbs on the back of the hardcover edition:

"Rowell keeps things surprising, and the solution maintains the novel's delicate balance of light and dark."  --Publisher's Weekly (starred review)

As I was getting close to the end (switching from audio to hardcover for the last little bit [Chapters 51-58]), I was getting ever more anxious that there simply weren't enough pages to achieve a "solution" as alluded to in the blurb.  Ultimately, I kind of see what the PW reviewer meant, but I was left wishing for more.

Backing up from my reaction to the end--Park and Eleanor's relationship is endearing.  Misfit love in 1986 in Omaha, Nebraska.  In high school.  Park had a mother who is Korean and a father who looks like Tom Selleck.  Eleanor has a doormat mother, four younger siblings and, a horrible, vicious stepfather, Richie.

Some readers might not be into the musical name-dropping (I've seen reviewers who complain about this kind of thing in books like The Time-Traveler's Wife.)  I enjoyed the musical references (I'm three years older than these characters who were 16 in 1986).  I even paused the audiobook to listen to "Love Will Tear Us Apart" (Joy Division).

Eleanor's home situation is so awful, I could only hate her mother for allowing it to happen. The five kids, including an actual baby ("Little" Richie) cower in one bedroom to stay out of Richie's drunken, raging way, and Mom just walks around on eggshells and tries to get the kids to not set off her horrid husband.  The whole thing almost made me want to downgrade my rating, but bad home situations happen in real life, too.  

So, this book has been on my want-to-read list for a long time.  I'm glad I finally listened to/read it.  After having signed up for at least three Giveaways for it on Goodreads....

Again.  And I'm grumpy again.  The publication date on this was 2-26-2013.  All I want is the edition I am actually listening to to already exist.  

Okay, so yesterday I talked about a book that was hurt by the audio narration -- this is one that's helped by it (but not much, because it really doesn't need much). I read this back when it came out, and gave it 4 Stars -- which boggles my mind, was I a harsher grader back then? I remembered liking it more than that, though. Anyway, this audiobook is the perfect example of what the medium can be.

It perfectly captured the flavor, the emotion and the detail of the original. Now, it didn't become all about the performance, the narrators brought the words to life, but not at the expense of the text.

Lowman and Malhotra were spectacular -- they were Eleanore and Park. You fall for them while the characters were falling for each other, and when they expressed emotion, you certainly felt it. Well, I don't know about "you," but definitely me.

I'm really not sure what else I can say. This is a perfect story about first love, how it defines who you are in a way you didn't expect -- how it reveals the best of you and improves the worst of you. Using these two social misfits to tell this story grounds it in a way that the Prom King and Queen couldn't -- I just loved it. It's probably the best thing Rowell's done, and it's one of the best audiobooks I've ever heard.