Reviews with content warning for Vomit - My Mechanical Romance

*TINY SPOILERS AHEAD*

This book managed to remain lighthearted and fun despite dealing with some hard topics such as misogynistic views in a STEM setting and how that paves the way women act in a usually 'masculine' type setting.

I found that the book was hollow and the ending seemed rushed. I feel like the writer should've encorperated more of the mechanical side of this book into the romance side and vise versa, making it seem more rounded up. Frequent time skipping sometimes even months into the future doesn't help

This book is definitely meant for a younger audience as opposed to older teens.

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bookspaperink's review

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4.0

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curiousreading's review

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inspiring lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Bel doesn't know what to do with her life (honestly, same) and just moved schools. When a female teacher pushes her (forces her) to join the schools' robotics team, she finds an unexpected passion for building fighting bots (don't ask me the details, I'm not a STEM girlie), friends for life (in the way that you find friends for life in high school) and an attraction to resident golden boy and rich boy Teo Luna.

From the top, you don't need to know anything about engineering, I tend to stay away from anything STEM related, and even I understood most of the engineering talk. The plot is fast-paced, and I genuinely believe that if the right girl reads this at the right time it might inspire her to look into engineering, cause it sounds so cool.

The writing is juvenile, and reads like 18-year-olds would speak. This book is still YA, but it's something that takes some getting used to, and might not be everyone's cup of tea. The dual POV was a great choice in my opinion, because Teo would not have been likeable if it were just his POV, or just Bel's POV.

If I were just rating it on writing, this would have been a 3-star book, but the story and characters were really enjoyable. And if you are looking for a quick read, or a palate cleanser after a heavier book, you should definitely pick this one up. However, if you pick this up because it was advertised as enemies-to-lovers in STEM (it's even mentioned in the book), be prepared to be disappointed. It's more like reluctant-collegues-to-lovers, which has a different dynamic to the beloved enemies-to-lovers trope.

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aromarrie's review against another edition

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hopeful lighthearted reflective fast-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

3.75

because of how quick my reading experience, i don’t think i got to fully appreciate the book for what it is but from what i’ve gleamed, the absolute charm that these characters had in this fiercely competitive academic setting (aka high school) had me so absorbed for someone who isn’t actively involved in STEM.

i loved seeing the passion that teo had for his robotics team because even though a lot of it came from the pressure of everyone’s high expectations of him, he was genuinely good at engineering and he is very calculating in what he does, so you know how careful he is when it comes to the smallest details.

seeing bel come into her own and find her own passion for engineering was such an enlightening experience; especially just to get to see her work out different kinks and study very closely on things that didn’t seem to matter to her before until it became all that mattered now.

bel’s journey in the STEM field and the friendships she built with other characters was so nice to see, and seeing how much is built between her & teo in their trust in each other as a romantic relationship forms was very sweet.

a big part of me feels like i’ll have to read this book again in the future and just pace myself a little slower because i certainly flew through it way faster than i wished for my first time. but overall, i’m glad to finally have read this 🤞🏽

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roshanreads's review

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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.

The problems the characters face in this book seem so real. Neelam talking about how women in STEM aren’t taken seriously and have to work so much harder to prove themselves made me tear up a little bit more than I want to admit, and Neelam and Bel crushing Richardson and his bot after the comments he made was phenomenal. I’m so glad Neelam and Bel became friends towards the end of the book after their rocky beginning.

Even the breakup felt realistic. The pressure on Bel to get into MIT was building, from Teo telling his father about Bel getting in, to Neelam telling her that she shouldn’t expect to get in just because she can build a good robot. There was even a conversation about how incredibly hard it is to get into a super prestigious college if you don’t have the right start in life, and how unfair it is to expect people to compete with someone with all the benefits in the world.

I love how Bel goes from having, like, zero goals beyond high school and avoids doing homework and assignments until the last possible minute, only to win a robotics competition and have a college seek her out specifically because she’s so good at what she does. I love that Bel didn’t get into MIT when she applied with Teo, and I love that her plans didn’t work out exactly as she wanted them to. Despite the fact that I was devastated for Bel, it was a nice reminder that happy endings don’t need to be exactly as you envision them. </spoiler?

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.

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rensreading's review

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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 lmao

i 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!

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