My Mechanical Romance
Ratings18
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings18
Average rating3.8
Opposites attract in this battle-robot-building YA romance from the NYT best-selling author of The Atlas Six. Bel would rather die than think about the future. College apps? You’re funny. Extracurriculars? Not a chance. But when she accidentally reveals a talent for engineering at school, she’s basically forced into joining the robotics club. Even worse? All the boys ignore Bel—and Neelam, the only other girl on the team, doesn't seem to like her either. Enter Mateo Luna, captain of the club, who recognizes Bel as a potential asset—until they start butting heads. Bel doesn’t care about Nationals, while Teo cares too much. But as the nights of after-school work grow longer and longer, Bel and Teo realize they've made more than just a combat-ready robot for the championship: they’ve made each other and the team better. Because girls do belong in STEM. In her YA debut, Alexene Farol Follmuth, author of The Atlas Six (under the penname Olivie Blake), explores both the challenges girls of color face in STEM and the vulnerability of first love with unfailing wit and honesty. With an adorable, opposites-attract romance at its center and lines that beg to be read aloud, My Mechanical Romance is swoonworthy perfection. A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
Reviews with the most likes.
this has a trope i HATE more than my father but i still gave it 4 stars so
this was so fun! highly recommend the audiobook (and huge thank you to shai for recommending the audiobook to me in the first place)!
a lot of the reservations that i have with Adults Writing Teenagers were dashed away in olivie blake's YA debut. both of the main characters, and even all of their friends, felt refreshingly authentic and real. there wasn't any forced teen speak, and the inner monologues of both main characters was fun to listen to. i think there was room for more conversations about privilege, but i had so much fun with this and generally enjoyed myself, so i won't complain too much.
MORE ALEXENE FAROL FOLLMUTH YA. NOW.
While I did enjoy the book, I had a few issues with it. Mostly the large gaps of time that the author jumped bothered me. It just felt like we were missing chunks of their lives. I don't normally mind time jumps, but these just kind of felt out of place when they occurred. I could also just be spoiled from Kdramas and Cdramas that show a lot of the cuter interactions between the leads during their everyday lives. I did like that the book focused on robotics and described their battles really well so it felt like I was actually there watching it. I also like that it tackled a lot of the discrimination that girls face in STEM fields simply for just being a girl.
In some ways I was a little sad to read this book as I never had the opportunities Bel had at my school. The only robotics program we had was introduced to the middle school (the announcement made in my final month of 8th grade) and was not offered to the high school students the next year despite us all being in the same building. I am glad that girls have so many more opportunities to try out STEM related subjects and careers nowadays.
Finally on a side note, I actually started to read the book because the title sounded like My Chemical Romance (my favorite band) and I was delighted to see the song Teenagers mentioned in the book!
