Book Review: My Mechanical Romance

by Alexene Farol Follmuth

I am super excited about this book review of My Mechanical Romance by Alexene Farol Follmuth. The moment I read the first chapter, I knew it’ll be a great story. This book is about a senior high school, straight-A student Bel, who doesn’t want to think about her future. She hasn’t planned about what she’ll be taking for college and hasn’t actually prepared for any school application. Until she was discovered to have a knack for engineering and was forced to join the robotics club.

Teo, on the other hand, is a boy genius, rich, and captain of the robotics club. He saw Bel’s potential with designing mechanisms, but somehow they end up not agreeing with each other. But with so much school work and being together most of the time, they discovered that they can actually be friends, combat-robot building partners and so much more.

{

“And you don’t understand how hard it is to be a girl competing with boys who don’t even realize that they, unlike us, are perceived as more competent no matter what we do”

– My Mechanical Romance, Alexene Farol Follmuth

I literary found a book that I absolutely can relate to! I am an engineering graduate, and my dad would always help me with school projects, and geez, I totally feel Bel and Neelam’s struggle to get their talent “acknowledged” in class. This book is a walk down memory lane for me.

Recently I’ve been reading heavy romance drama and My Mechanical Romance is such a nice ice breaker. It’s an easy fun read, light but has a very relatable story that I know people who are 16 to 19 years of age will actually enjoy. I totally love Bel cause I adore lead characters who are strong, unique, and intelligent. She is so weird but interesting at the same time that I added her to my “Book characters that I want to be best friends with”. With all that has been going on with her life, family issues, and school deadlines, college pressure, it’s really good to know that these people know how to set their priorities. An absolute role models!

Talk about chemistry too. I love how Teo and Bel complement each other’s character. Teo, genius and entitled as he may be, his character development as the story progress was pretty realistic too. I truly liked his relationship with his mom and well, given that his dad is a famous tech personality, I get why he is strict with Teo. Although, to be someone that rich, I do wonder why Teo doesn’t have any bodyguards… lol.

Shout out to all of the supporting characters namely… Ms. Voss (EVERYBODY NEEDS A PROFESSOR LIKE HER!), Dash, Luke, Jamie, and Lora… these people are awesome! I love how Alexene gives them such a memorable personality, you’ll end up wanting to have somebody “like them” in your life.

{

“…and what you don’t understand is that when you come into this world unprepared and unfocused and without even a fundamental understanding of what you’re doing, you have nothing to fight back with.”

– My Mechanical Romance, Alexene Farol Follmuth

I guess, what I really love about this book is that it focused on how females are usually neglected or undermined in a field that is dominated by males. I have been there and looking back I struggle to be heard, to be appreciated, to finally be someone whom my professor would recognize as one of his top students in the lab. I was truly thankful to my dad because he knows what it’s like… he has seen it and so, he trained me so hard that I excel in all my engineering classes. That feeling that Bel and Neelam felt during the competition… the pride and joy… I know that feeling too. Oh… I forgot to mention, I’m a Filipina so… another plus for this book. lol.

I received a free eARC in return for my honest review. Thank you so much to Netgalley, Holiday House, and to Alexene Farol Follmuth for giving me the chance to read this book and for reminding me how like Bel, I enjoyed my time during my engineering days in college.