Hi Everyone
Happy Tuesday and happy book release day! I'm so excited to share my thoughts about My Mechanical Romance which just came out today! It's by Alexene Farol Follmuth or as some of you might know her by her other author name Olivie Blake (Author of Atlas Six). I always love contemporaries about women and girls in stem so I couldn't wait to read this one, and I'm excited to share my thoughts about it! A big thank you to Netgalley and Holiday House Books for the ARC.
I loved this book even more than expected and I couldn't be happier. I LOVE reading contemporary romances about women in STEM. They're definitely getting to be more common but still not common enough to not make any book with that subject stand out from other contemporary romances. Having these books that show the struggles girls, in general, but especially girls of colour face in STEM are important for us to read. The storyline of Bel going from hesitant to join robotics and getting ignored by the other members in the beginning, to making combat-ready robots and driving them with the other girl on the team for the final competition gave Bel the chance to really show not only her school but the readers that girls do truly belong in stem.
What I loved about this book was that it focused on Bel coming to terms with how much she love and wants to be involved in engineering and robotics. It wasn't that she didn't already love engineering, it's that she hadn't ever really put any importance on that love. It was wonderful to get to see Bel open up and start to become who she's meant to be throughout the book. It started right from the beginning when Bel's physics teacher Ms Voss saw potential in Bel after her physics project gone wrong….. or maybe right in this case? Ms. Voss saw the potential Bel had and knew how to push Bel just enough to get her where she needs it to be without it seeming overly forced. I admired the fact that Bel had a teacher that truly cared about her and wanted her full potential to be reached.
Once again, the POV’s were split between Bel and Teo which I enjoyed because I always like understanding both sides of the story. They both had some troubles with their home life which slowly got worked out, even just a bit, throughout the story. At times the two would help each other but they were also good about working out things on their own.
The same with Bel and Teo’s relationship. It was a total opposites-attract and was a slow burn which worked in well with the contemporary part of the book. The aspect of the vulnerability of first love just seemed to fit so perfectly with the story, and Bel and Teo made such a great team.
Until next time,
Emily Marie