Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

I finally got my hands on this one – it’s been talked about all over the place!

Eleanor is a 30 year old woman who is on the spectrum. She is a quirky lady who works in an office setting. She keeps the same schedule each week, up until she meets Raymond from the IT department. Things seem to change for her – together they come across an elderly man named Sam who falls on the street. They start to care for him in the hospital and it’s the most interaction Eleanor has had in awhile. These new interactions start to bring up Eleanor’s deep dark past of her family history, why she’s jumped from house to house as a child, why she has the scar on her face, and why her relationship with her mother is the way it is.

I feel terrible to say this, but I just couldn’t get into the story. I usually love mental illness books, but I just couldn’t wrap my head around this one. It’s a dark book, and most people seem to pour out all their emotions because of it, but I was bored. I really wasn’t entertained by the side humor throughout and stopped reading it a couple of the times throughout. The ending was beautiful, but I could’ve DNF’d this one multiple times.

2/5 Stars