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whatjasread's review against another edition
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
2/5
I will preface this by saying I'm not a young adult, so definitely didn't expect to love this, but I had gone into it thinking it'd be... better. Considering we've seen what Follmuth can do in The Atlas Six (Olivie Blake being her pseudonym for adult works), this reads very much as an amateur piece of work, but that could just be me. I think the premise and the overarching message of the book are great - we always need more women in STEM, bonus points from me if there's a romance involved - but the execution was very far off the mark.
I didn't like any of the characters - Neelam was just plain annoying and I don't like a women v women story arc; Bel grated on me with her constant umm-ing and ahh-ing, and I think the quirkiness just wasn't for me; Teo was an asshole and nothing could've redeemed him for me.
The book touches on themes such as divorce and figuring out family dynamics thereafter, and it was those elements that really heightened the experience for me. But the romance lacked any kind of chemistry for me and I just wasn't convinced by the book at all, unfortunately.
TWs: divorce, alcohol consumption (underage), reference to sexual content, adultery (before book)
Tropes/rep/themes: filipino-american fmc, latino american jewish mmc, women in stem, enemies to lovers, found family
I will preface this by saying I'm not a young adult, so definitely didn't expect to love this, but I had gone into it thinking it'd be... better. Considering we've seen what Follmuth can do in The Atlas Six (Olivie Blake being her pseudonym for adult works), this reads very much as an amateur piece of work, but that could just be me. I think the premise and the overarching message of the book are great - we always need more women in STEM, bonus points from me if there's a romance involved - but the execution was very far off the mark.
I didn't like any of the characters - Neelam was just plain annoying and I don't like a women v women story arc; Bel grated on me with her constant umm-ing and ahh-ing, and I think the quirkiness just wasn't for me; Teo was an asshole and nothing could've redeemed him for me.
The book touches on themes such as divorce and figuring out family dynamics thereafter, and it was those elements that really heightened the experience for me. But the romance lacked any kind of chemistry for me and I just wasn't convinced by the book at all, unfortunately.
TWs: divorce, alcohol consumption (underage), reference to sexual content, adultery (before book)
Tropes/rep/themes: filipino-american fmc, latino american jewish mmc, women in stem, enemies to lovers, found family
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexism and Misogyny
Moderate: Infidelity
Minor: Alcohol and Sexual content
roshanreads's review
emotional
funny
inspiring
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Thank you to NetGalley and Holiday House Books for the eARC!
If there’s one book you should read this year, this is it. I love this book. It’s definitely one of my favourites this year, possibly ever. My Mechanical Romance has everything I possibly could have wanted in a book; dual POV, girls in STEM, a diverse cast, and characters that fail sometimes, and quite badly. Once I picked this book up, I could barely put it down. Obviously, it was a five-star read without hesitation, and that’s a rating I don’t usually give to romance novels.
My Mechanical Romance is the story of Bel Maier as her talents for robotics and doing her homework the day it's due lands her in an advanced physics class and gets her a place on the school robotics team. She’s not particularly happy with either of those events, which is understandable considering the less than warm reception from some of the other robotics team members. However, over the course of the book, she finds her place and her natural talents begin to shine as the team prepares for the biggest robotics competition of the year.
I have so many good things to say about this book that I almost don’t know where to start, but that doesn’t help convince people that they should read the book (you really should, by the way). I loved this book so much I basically forgot to make notes because I was so focused on finding out what was on the next page and what was going to happen.
Bel and Teo are so cute. I love how they worked together as rivals and when they didn’t see eye to eye, and then still competed with each other after they were together. They talked to each other about the problems they were having, and they worked so well as a team! Also, how could I not ship them after reading the line ‘Because wherever I am, I want her close by’? It would be literally impossible. Spoiler time, even when they broke up, they still cared about each other and believed in each other.
Now, time for even more spoilers because I want to talk about everything that happened in this book to whoever will listen.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, read this book. You won’t regret it at all. This book alone makes me want to auto-buy anything and everything Alexene Farol Follmuth writes. I gave it a five-star rating, and it’s the reason I made a 2022 Favourite Books list. Read My Mechanical Romance.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexism, Misogyny, and Vomit
Moderate: Infidelity and Violence
Minor: Classism, Sexual content, and Cultural appropriation
staysunny's review against another edition
inspiring
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.5
Thank you to Netgalley and Holiday House for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!
My Mechanical Romance is a YA contemporary romance that follows high school seniors Bel and Teo after Bel transfers schools and joins the robotics team. Teo is an only child, star student and captain of the robotics team; Bel is the youngest of three, smart, has good building sense, and a little directionless at the start of the book. While told in dual POV (which I love seeing and wish was more common!), I felt that we were following Bel’s story more than their story.
I do wish we had gotten to see more the bots in action and would have liked to know more about the technicals or mechanics of the actual building of the bots. This is one thing I personally look for when a romance or rom com has a more niche topic featured. Since the story had more of a focus on Bel we also saw how she handled being a young woman exploring a STEM field. I thought this was handled very well, especially because it could have been so easy to fall into a “not like other girls” rhetoric. I appreciated getting to see how Teo thought of Bel and how people treated her, as well as how Bel was experiencing things firsthand.
Storytelling-wise, I found the narrative a bit repetitive and slow at times, and I had a few issues with how close Bel and her friends seemed to become in such a short period of time. In contrast, the way the teenage characters spoke with each other felt very natural, which is not always a given in YA contemporary stories.
My Mechanical Romance is a YA contemporary romance that follows high school seniors Bel and Teo after Bel transfers schools and joins the robotics team. Teo is an only child, star student and captain of the robotics team; Bel is the youngest of three, smart, has good building sense, and a little directionless at the start of the book. While told in dual POV (which I love seeing and wish was more common!), I felt that we were following Bel’s story more than their story.
I do wish we had gotten to see more the bots in action and would have liked to know more about the technicals or mechanics of the actual building of the bots. This is one thing I personally look for when a romance or rom com has a more niche topic featured. Since the story had more of a focus on Bel we also saw how she handled being a young woman exploring a STEM field. I thought this was handled very well, especially because it could have been so easy to fall into a “not like other girls” rhetoric. I appreciated getting to see how Teo thought of Bel and how people treated her, as well as how Bel was experiencing things firsthand.
Storytelling-wise, I found the narrative a bit repetitive and slow at times, and I had a few issues with how close Bel and her friends seemed to become in such a short period of time. In contrast, the way the teenage characters spoke with each other felt very natural, which is not always a given in YA contemporary stories.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Alcohol
Minor: Sexual content
rensreading's review
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
this e-arc was provided to me by netgalley
it took me quite a while to actually pick up this book. not because i was busy but because i wasn’t in the mood for a high school romance until about mid-april. im not a fan of stem and this book had a lot of that to go around. i took a small break about halfway through this book to tear through another and then came back because i couldn’t leave bel and teo alone for too long.
i really liked them both individually and together as a couple. they were very honest and straightforward with each other when it really came down to it. bel was funny and weird and teo was besotted by her weirdness bc his best friend, dash, is the exact same lmaoi definitely thought they’d break up after high school though. i didn’t really buy that they were in love, especially not when they confessed that to each other. it just didn’t feel like it was developed well enough to reach that point at the time that it did is all.
teo trying to look the other way when it came to the misogyny and sexism that surrounds bel and neelam really annoyed me though. and mac? still hate him. bel should not have “forgiven” him so quickly. just because she gained the approval of a man who was being such a passive-aggressive misogynist towards her for most of the school year doesn’t mean he actually realizes all the wrong he did. and neelam? i wanted to like her character but i couldn’t. the bitter, fiercely intelligent woman in stem trope? drag it out back and take it out of its misery already. i’m not saying she had to be all happy-go-lucky though. she just didn’t need to act so much like that that others didn’t seem to like her even one bit. it’s so easy for people to say you’re difficult to work with when you truly are difficult to work with and are too jaded by the environment to try and change that.
the complicated relationships with parents was a nice touch though. i still don’t like teo’s dad. i feel like the author was trying to cook up a specific angle about teo’s relationship with his dad and then decided to turn off the heat just as it was beginning to sizzle. a lot of the book felt like that by the third act to be honest. not to say this was awful, it just wasn’t groundbreaking or life-changing is all.
oh, and luke? has my whole heart. hope he’s thriving!
it took me quite a while to actually pick up this book. not because i was busy but because i wasn’t in the mood for a high school romance until about mid-april. im not a fan of stem and this book had a lot of that to go around. i took a small break about halfway through this book to tear through another and then came back because i couldn’t leave bel and teo alone for too long.
i really liked them both individually and together as a couple. they were very honest and straightforward with each other when it really came down to it. bel was funny and weird and teo was besotted by her weirdness bc his best friend, dash, is the exact same lmao
teo trying to look the other way when it came to the misogyny and sexism that surrounds bel and neelam really annoyed me though. and mac? still hate him. bel should not have “forgiven” him so quickly. just because she gained the approval of a man who was being such a passive-aggressive misogynist towards her for most of the school year doesn’t mean he actually realizes all the wrong he did. and neelam? i wanted to like her character but i couldn’t. the bitter, fiercely intelligent woman in stem trope? drag it out back and take it out of its misery already. i’m not saying she had to be all happy-go-lucky though. she just didn’t need to act so much like that that others didn’t seem to like her even one bit. it’s so easy for people to say you’re difficult to work with when you truly are difficult to work with and are too jaded by the environment to try and change that.
the complicated relationships with parents was a nice touch though. i still don’t like teo’s dad. i feel like the author was trying to cook up a specific angle about teo’s relationship with his dad and then decided to turn off the heat just as it was beginning to sizzle. a lot of the book felt like that by the third act to be honest. not to say this was awful, it just wasn’t groundbreaking or life-changing is all.
oh, and luke? has my whole heart. hope he’s thriving!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexism, Vomit, and Misogyny
Moderate: Racism
Minor: Sexual content
the sexual content isn’t graphic, just two separate mentions of sex being something that
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