If you like: Delia Owens, Jeanine Cummins, Adam Kay
If you’re in the mood for: British Literature, Dark, Quirky & Relatable
My reading format: Audiobook
About this book (the blurb)
No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding unnecessary human contact, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.
But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen, the three rescue one another from the lives of isolation that they had been living. Ultimately, it is Raymond’s big heart that will help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one. If she does, she’ll learn that she, too, is capable of finding friendship—and even love—after all.
Smart, warm, uplifting, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes…the only way to survive is to open your heart.
My Review
This is an adult contemporary fiction book with a bit of romance that deals with mental health.
I’ve got to wonder, what took me so long to read this book? I think it was because I thought it might be a romance novel, which I wasn’t in the mood for. Unexpectedly, I loved this quirky book and have been searching far and wide for ‘what to read after Eleanor’? I’ve fallen for too many hyped books recently but this sure lived up to its name.
Listening to this book brought back all sorts of memories I had of living in London in the early 2000’s. You slowly learn to relate to Eleanor in unexpected ways. For most people this book will stay with you long after you’ve read it, that includes me.
I know this book has polarised the world and based on lots of very unscientific research, I think about 10% of people don’t like this book. I highly recommend it though, especially if you liked Crawdad’s.
I will give this books 5 stars.
