This was, without exaggeration, the best YA rom-com I have ever read. Ever. The characters, the voice, the plot, the pacing—everything was perfect. My Mechanical Romance is a pure bundle of joy. Go read it.

(Longer review to come.)

This was such a cute and fun story. I enjoyed every moment of it and the writing is so so beautiful!!! I'm so thankful that more stories involving women in STEM are gaining popularity lately.

I loved Bel so much, I loved her attitude, and her passion for building. And then we have Teo, the golden boy whom everyone loves, but his life isn't as perfect as it seems. I enjoyed their banter so much and I like how their relationship developed. The side characters were such a fun bunch and they're one of the reasons why I enjoyed reading this.

This book also talks about sexism and how women (especially in male dominated areas like STEM) are often looked down on and questioned about their abilities, but Bel and the rest of the girls prove them wrong!!

Thank you Netgalley and Holiday House for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was such a cute YA. As someone who was into a male dominated sport for years I really enjoyed the premise of a girl being good at boy things. Gender equality is always refreshing in stories. I really resonated with bel and was rooting for her the whole time. It was also really cool to have robotics be the centre of the plot. However at times the physic speak was a little too much and over my head

At first I hated Teo. You probably will as well. But he kinda grew on me ?

The love story itself is cute, but what I loved most is Bel, the main character. I related a lot to her experience as a girl in engineering/STEM, and I think that many will too.

Thank you netgalley for providing an ARC in exchange for a review.

Isn't the cover cuteee???
Academic rivals to lover in STEM, I wasn't sure about this one at first, but my introduction to Bel just made me fall in love with the book.

I love Bel so much and she's really interesting and relatable, loved that she always stood up for herself. Teo grew on me, an amazing guy! Kind of a perfectionist who always wants to find a solution to every problem.
I loved that he paid so much attention to Bel and was always proud of her. Both of them together?? Awesome! Amazing duo! The connection was so natural, and I loved that they were able to help each other grow.
The side characters and the friendships made were amazing and loveable, which makes me want to join the robotics team! aha aha!!! Dash???!!!! My favorite character, he was so funny, he made me laugh hard!.

This was a really cute read. I was smiling from ear to ear while reading this book.

This is exactly the kind of book I wish I had when I was in high school, but I'm so glad it's going to be out in the world soon!! I related so much to these characters, especially because I was part of my high school robotics team for two years before eventually moving on to pursue engineering in college. I loved how the "power/expectation" imbalance between boys and girls in STEM was handled so well and I think is a conversation that needs to continue being talked about. The female empowerment and uplifting friendships in this book were so heartwarming to see evolve throughout the book and teaches an incredibly important lesson for young girls wanting to pursue STEM that they are valid and deserve a place in this field. And of course, we have the classic academic rivals-to-friends-to-lovers that was executed so beautifully and organically; I want to wrap Bel & Teo in a big, tight hug because they truly deserve the world. The diversity in this book was also the cherry on top (seeing Filipino & Iranian rep really made my heart soar :') ). I cannot recommend this book enough & hopefully this is the start of more STEM books to come!

This book was AMAZING and I’m in love. It follows Bel and Teo, and it’s told from two perspectives. And… it’s academic rivals to lovers perfection.

After doing a project for a class the morning it’s due, Bel’s teacher tells her she has some impressive engineering skills and she should try to join the robotics team. Bel is super hesitant about that, but she ends up doing it – she goes there to fail, but Teo immediately picks her when she does a cool design better than what everyone else is doing. After that, they enter a bit of a rivalry/get annoyed with each other regularly because Bel doesn’t seem to care about the club at first, and the club is the thing Teo cares about most. As the story goes on though, Bel of course finds passion and love for robotics and… for Teo, heheheh.

At the start of the book, I was enjoying it and thought it was a pleasant read, but once I got over 20%, I fell in love. I fell in love with Teo and Bel as individuals, and I related to so many things they were going through. Their romance is absolutely incredible too, and I feel like the development of it was perfectly done – the progression is so natural, and it’s neither too slow nor too rushed. I rooted for them so much, and loved how they really brought out the best in each other. Their individual character development was so good too.

Also, even though I’m by no means a science person, I am certainly a nerd, so I loved that about the characters and all the themes around robotics. It’s not something I’m directly interested in at all, but because of how passionate they were about it, it made me love all those parts of the book as well.

Overall, the story is light-hearted but it does also address the difficulties and discrimination of girls of color in STEM, which I thought was an amazing addition to the story, and it all worked seamlessly together.

So obviously, I highly recommend this for all fans of YA contemporary romance, for all nerds and people who love nerdy characters. If you want a fun book that’ll be really quick to read, will make you smile, and root for wonderful characters, you need to pick this up the second it comes out.

I cannot love Teo and Bel enough. They are so cute in this YA read. Bonded over robotics and dealing with the pressure to compete Teo and Bel pull it off and together. I love this book!

thank you netgalley for an arc in exchange of an honest review !

this was a really cute book that was perfect while reading stories with heavier topics! bel's character was amazing and relatable. her thoughts, her interactions with friends and family, she felt so real, it is perfect for younger girls who face the same problems as she or neelam do. teo's character was definitely my favorite and i loved how his development was made, leading him into understanding his relationships with the other characters and that his vision of what surrounds him definitely isn't the same for everyone. all of this without making any of the characters annoying!

bonus point on how well done the rivals to lovers was made and handle, it was super realistic and the timeline was perfect. the epilogue was really sweet and after finishing it, i wouldn't have said no to at least 50 more pages of their future!

this was my first read by this author and i'm beyond excited to check her other work under olivie blake and what she will keep publishing.

What an amazing book!
The book is super exciting and would love to read more from the author!

Thankyou netgalley for the ARC

"Honestly? Physics is easy. What’s hard is feeling like I want to be invisible all the time."

Alexene Farol Follmuth is a new author to me and her writing style was just as I prefer. This was a really smart, geeky, tech-savvy and at the same time funny and wholesome romance! Isabel Maier was such a relatable heroine. She's awkward, confused but so smart and supportive but what I liked the most about her was her transparency. Because of all those qualities, not only her but all the other characters felt so real and easy to grasp.

"What he and I have together is the best thing we’ve ever built."

Matteo aka Teo Luna was another wonderful main character! Seriously, I adored the guy. He saw Bel for who she was, he was the one who gave her the push she needed that lead her to the right direction. I loved watching them evolve from initially being strangers to confidants to friends and finally to lovers! Overall, this was a totally endearing read with relatable circumstances that all teenagers have to go through at a crucial point in their lives. It is definitely recommend to anyone who is in the mood to pass time with a lighthearted, coming of age, drama free romance (with a little steam), a story of self growth and some pretty diverse characters.

Thank you Netgalley and Holiday House for the eARC

“The world is not very helpful to a smart girl”
“Enemies to academic colleagues to lovers”
This book was really good. It had a perfect combination of fluffy romance and some very educational lesson that I feel like a lot of people should start learning.
The plot itself was more than simply a college romance!!
Bel’s story as well as other girls’ ones showed how undervalued women are especially when it comes to science physics and robotics.
Yes men can build and use the Robo I guess when women can do it and sometimes even better!!!
I loved the feeling of partnership that developed between the team members both with boys and girls!!
But I also loved how Teo was described.
I loved the fact that he was simply a boy on whose shoulders there was the heavy burden of a huge amount of expectations coming from school, coming from family and finally coming from himself.
This book was really good and the dynamics between the characters were relatable and funny to read about.
“Take up your own space, Bell. Don’t let other people tread over it”
“You’re dangerous, bel canto”

Thank you, Holiday House, for the advance reading copy.

This book turns out to be a surprise!

I find the writing quite adorable and the characters quite relatable. I just love these nerds!

If you feel like you haven't read a good young adult romance in a while now, don't think too much about it. The right book is here! I mean who can deny this adorable cover!

The story exactly lives up to the blurb which I find pretty damn satisfying.

This is the story about Bel and Mateo Luna who are basically thrown together in the same college by fate (sigh! This should happen more in stories. I know it happens all the time but I just need more of this you know!).

And then the drama begins (psst! You cannot take sides okay?!). Enemies to lovers? Who would have thought about it when their characters are so different. Bel and Teo have to work together to win the Nationals. Their nerd talk is everything for me!

I feel the characters are developed so well. You just cannot ignore even the side characters. You will know what I mean.

You will get to see their struggles (you know more adults need to read such books to know what the young have to go through at college and uni).

This would have been the most ultimate perfect read for me if I didn't feel some parts did drag in between. Otherwise a fun engaging nerdy read!

you know that feeling when you start reading a good book but it’s really late at night and then you can’t stop reading the book because it’s so good and before you know it, it’s 5am?

yeah. so that happened with this book. it was SUCH a good time!

my mechanical romance follows bel, a teenager who has recently moved schools and is essentially forced to get involved with her new school’s robotics team. but nothing can ever be simple — although the leader of the team, teo, selects her as a new member, they are put in numerous head to head situations as the team prepares for nationals. what ensues is a fun, science driven YA contemporary, filled with great humor, cute moments, and a love story you can’t help but root for.

i really enjoyed this book. bel and teo were multi-dimensional characters, and their struggles and personalities added so much to this story. their moments together were so cute, and their banter was perfect. i also really enjoyed the STEM aspects of this book. having been in the same position while i was in high school (a nerd) like these characters, it was refreshing to see a contemporary book from this point of view. i had no choice but to binge this book in one sitting, because i loved it that much. 4.5/5 stars!

thank you so much to publisher, who provided an arc through netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to the publisher, Holiday House and Netgalley for providing me with an e-arc in exchange for an honest review

The moment I saw this book, I knew I just had to read it. Let us all just take a moment to appreciate the gorgeous cover. It’s pink, the character drawings are on point, and it perfectly represents this story. This book is academic rivals to lovers, features a woman of color in a STEM field, and is just a cute romance overall. And I want to mention that the author is also known as Olivie Blake, the author of the Atlas Six, a very popular book right now (and rightly so!)

My Mechanical Romance follow Bel, who joins the robotics team after one of her teachers notices a special talent and potential for engineering. She’s really good at finding errors in the team’s robots and finding solutions for them but the team leader and driver, Teo, doesn’t like it when someone corrects his ideas. So obviously they don’t see eye-to-eye but as they spend more time together, building the perfect bot, they start to realize that the other isn’t soo bad.

50 pages into the book, I knew it was going to be 5 stars. No matter what. I loved relationship between all the characters, you could really feel the friendship through the interactions they had with each other. I had a soft spot for Bel, as she is half-Filipino and I love any representation in books. I think a lot of young adults and teens will be able to relate to Bel and her struggle to figure out what she wants to do. I could also relate to Teo in the way that he was kind of a perfectionist and felt that he had to find a solution to every problem, including one’s that weren’t his own. The romance between Bel and Teo was exactly what I was looking for. It was cute, there was tension, the banter between them was amazing, and the Taylor Swift references were squeal worthy.

Read more on my blog.

This books starts with Bel switching schools because her parents got a divorce and she had to move with her mom, she’s a senior in high school and doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life after it, on the first day her teacher encouraged her to join the robotics club to try something new she accepts and that’s where she meets Teo Luna that helps her change the perspective of what she wants.


I added this book to my reading list under the impression it was academic rivals but it is not and i know some people added it to their lists thinking the same BUT it was a really cute high school romance book totally worth reading , i loved the way he compared her eyes to things from the outer space multiple times, i think if you love high school romance books you would definitely like this one.

Thank you, NetGalley and Holiday House Pub for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!!!

- academic rivals to lovers
- POC rep
- women in stem

I was sooo excited when I saw this on NetGalley. I'm a HUGE 'the atlas six' fan, (counting down the days to 'the atlas paradox'), so back when this book was announced I was intrigued to see Follmuth's reading style translate from Fantasy to YA.

She did not disappoint.

We follow Bel and Mateo, Bel is on her journey through the last year of high school- managing career direction confusion and college application stress, along with being thrown into robotics club with all boy members, except one other girl-Neelam. Mateo, is the captain of said robotics team, with drive and the advantage of knowing what he's wanted in a career for a while.

We see Bel deal with being ignored constantly by other club members, club teachers and even Neelam. She struggles to find her voice, even though she knows her stuff.

So much of this book was relatable. I'm not a #women-in-stem, but a lot of these same gender biases can be translated beyond the field of science and tech. That being said, Follmuth did a wonderful job portraying the characters as real teenagers, as well as the reality of being a woman in a male-dominated field.

The character dialogues were engaging and well thought out. I laughed and screamed and made weird faces all throughout this book. It pulled strings. Bel's "I don't know what to do with my life" senior year crisis was so relatable- finding your path so young is hard. I loved Ms. Voss's advocacy for Bel. She really pushed her out of her comfort zone, even when she didn't want to be pushed.

The most thought-provoking part is seeing Bel's advantages grow as she grows closer to Mateo. It really pivoted the way I was viewing certain characters and brought a lot of conversations up at relevant times. I was scared this book was going to be "the boy saves the day!", but it wasn't.

I love academic-rivals-to-lovers. My favourite YA troupe. It's always amazing. It doesn't miss. This book included.

4.5 stars!

It’s been a minute since I’ve ventured into YA and I can honestly say I’m happy to return to the genre with this book! Although I occasionally got lost in the technical talk, these characters were so much fun. I lol’d at quite a few parts, Bel and Teo have fantastic banter, and their friends hold their own. It was tough connecting with Bel at first, but I think that’s just part of her character’s development, as we really watch her find herself and her voice. I liked that the author didn’t try to make the drama between Bel and Teo too “adult”. It was perfect for a couple looking to find themselves in their senior year of high school.

I’d absolutely recommend this book for anyone looking for YA read with some light romance, great friendships, and character growth.

This book was really cute from beginning to end! The author did a great job at describing the experience of a young girl interested in STEM and I really liked how Bel stuck up for herself in situations where she was treated differently than the male students. The romance in the book was sweet and I loved the enemies to colleagues to lovers progression. This was a great novel and I can't wait to read more from this author!

first of all, this book was amazing! it wasn’t hard for me fall in love with it considering it served one of my favourite tropes which is academic rivals to lovers and this trope was done so well that i could literally reread this book right now and not be bored.

<i>my mechanical romance</i> follows bel, who is forced to join the robotics team after her teacher notices her potential and talent for engineering. bel was honestly the perfect protagonist and i think many young people could relate with her struggles. her relationship with her teacher ms. voss reminded me of one of my favourite teachers in high school and those moments were personally some of the most heart warming ones. we could use more teachers like that in our world.

the plot of the whole book was also very interesting and i’m so happy that stem inspired romance books are getting more popular these days. i really liked reading about the robot fights since i also used to be really into science in high school.

when it comes to romance i’m just gonna say it’s one of the most adorable ones i’ve read about in a while. teo and bel were the perfect couple and i love how they understood each other and always tried to be helpful and considerate. their issues were also resolved in such a nice way and i was so relieved that there was no drama. all the other characters were lovable as well.

this book was one of the shorter ones and fast paced but it still captured all of the emotions perfectly. <i>my mechanical romance</i> managed to both be cute and funny and explore really important themes in life which is one of the reasons i loved it so much.