My Mechanical Romance by Alexene Farol Follmuth – Book Review

A huge thank you to RB Media and NetGalley for providing me with an audio ARC of My Mechanical Romance by Alexene Farol Follmuth in exchange for an honest review.

What It Is About

Everyone at this school has plans. And then they want me to have plans, and I’m just so overwhelmed by their good intentions that I constantly feel the need to lay down for a solid five minutes before trying again.

Bel is a pretty laid back kind of girl on her way to miss a chance to get into a good college because she doesn’t even try. Luckily, her potential and specifically a talent for engineering gets her a spot at the school’s robotics club. To no one’s pleasure.

Mateo Luna is the captain of the robotics club and pretty much Bel’s opposite. He is passionate and driven, and always gives 150 percent of himself.

The two often butt heads, but they also make a decent team. And the more time they spend together, the more chemistry between them grows.

My Mechanical Romance by Alexene Farol Follmuth, the author of The Atlas Six (under the penname Olivie Blake), is her fun, witty YA debut. It is full of adorable teen romance, swoon worthy instances, laugh out loud comebacks and all the entertainment building battle-robots can offer.

All the while, it not-so-quietly supports the fact that girls really do belong in STEM.

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Read it if you like:

• • nerdy YA romance
  • high school setting
  • rivals-to-friends-to-lovers
  • coming of age
  • girls in STEM
  • dual POV
    

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My Mechanical Romance by Alexene Farol Follmuth – My Review

There’s the faintest glow from the streetlight outside on her hair, and she smells like sawdust and strawberry lip balm and for a second, I really don’t care what happens next.

My Mechanical Romance by Alexene Farol Follmuth was the cutest, the nerdiest YA romance I’ve ever read and I just loved it!

And I was already prepared to like it, based on the description and reviews. But I didn’t think I was going to enjoy it this much!

If you like contemporary YA romances set in academia like I do, make sure you don’t miss this one. There was something so charming and adorable about it, I couldn’t put it down.

First, I love the school settings, whether it be college, boarding school or just your regular high school. So from the start I already felt in my element. And at this particular high school, the robotics team absolutely rocks!

It’s a lot. Trying all the time. Trying not to screw up, just makes me feel so tired. There’s all this pressure to plan for a future, you know? And like, what future?

I loved how creative and passionate the members of the team were. I myself am not much into robots, but their enthusiasm made me wanna be there with them and build something. And the competitions added an extra exciting layer to the whole story.

The writing was also great. The author – she’s funny, made me laugh out loud many times. And when I wasn’t laughing, I felt touched, and moved, and entertained, and engaged, and rooting for them all from the bottom of my heart.

The romance was also just what I was looking forward to. It was cute and sweet and charming and deliciously nerdy.

Mateo and Bel were adorable together. They had just the right amount of rivalry between them for a bit of bumping heads and funny banter, while still beings friendly and caring and supportive towards each other.

He smiles, and I know that win or lose, Teo Luna and I are made of a strong foundation. What he and I have together is the best thing we’ve ever built.

In fact, the two of them, both together and separately, were my absolute favorite part of this book. I loved them! They were really well written, they felt so real and relatable.

Bel is a half Filipino girl whose parents recently got divorced. She sometimes feels the weight of the world on her shoulders, but that doesn’t stop her from being strong, persistent, sassy, funny and full of energy.

Bel is super smart, creative and compassionate. She almost sounds too good to be true, yet she was so relatable and easy to love. She also needed to learn you need to fight to get where you want to go in this life.

Mateo was also both complex and incredibly easy to understand and like. He felt that people expected a lot from him and he always pushed himself too hard, trying not to disappoint anyone.

It was such a pleasure following both Bel and Mateo as they were trying to find their place and learn what it was they truly wanted in life. They had to figure out who they were on their own before they could truly work well together. And they both grew so much through the course of the book.

It’s really, really hard to recognize someone as the villain in someone else’s life when you’re pretty sure you love them both.

My Mechanical Romance was by far one of the best YA romances I’ve ever read. It was emotional, and fun, and clever, and really well written.  So much personality and so much wholesomeness in less than 300 pages!

Alexene Farol Follmuth is the author who wrote The Atlas Six under the name Olivie Blake. I’ve kind of fallen out with fantasy lately, so I probably won’t be reading that one.

But I hope she’ll write many more books with vibes similar to My Mechanical Romance – I just don’t see how I could ever get bored of this. Fingers crossed we get the next one soon…