This is such a sweet romance that takes place between two rivals on the high school robotics team. For Teo Luna, robotics is his passion, and he wants to be sure that everything goes perfectly his senior year. Bel is new to the school, but after impressing her physics teacher, ends up trying out and making the team. Bel and Teo immediately butt heads when Bel points out flaws in his robot's design.

I really enjoyed the rivals to lovers in a STEM club setting. I thought the commentary on how not knowing what opportunities are out there negatively affects students, who didn't know they needed to be preparing for a dream job they didn't know existed. I also loved the robot competitions.

I also thought both narrators did a wonderful job of bringing everyone's voices to life.

This is a cute nerd romance for teens. Mateo and Bel find themselves both on the robotics team after her mom forces her to switch schools after her parents' marriage implodes (been there - seen it). They both have to shake off their assumptions about one another to work together as a team to win the highly competitive robotics events.

This was a sweet story about some high school students who learn to appreciate each other's differences as well as learn to respect others despite learned generalizations.

Great audio narration!

I tried multiple times, but I could only get a few hours in. I just wasn't invested in the story. Thank you so much for the opportunity to read and review for an honest opinion

You know I wasn’t sure about this one at first. It didn’t seem to be my thing even though I typically love light books like this. And then - it was over!

That’s right - a book I wasn’t sure about I finished in ONE SITTING. The storyline was typical, but it was so fast paced that once it was over I found myself smiling and having really enjoyed it!

I have the audio, thanks to NetGalley, and the narrators knocked it out of the park. This is a cozy little high school love story and it’s definitely enjoyable. I recommend it to anyone looking for a lighthearted read or anyone that’s into robotics - but seriously - that play one words in the title? My inner emo is SCREAMING.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A delightful surprise! The author's adult work didn't quite live up to the hype for me, and other adult STEM feminist romances by popular authors didn't either, so I was a little apprehensive before going into this, but it ended up being such a breath of fresh air.
I thought the book did a fantastic job of portraying the way young girls are often neglected, discouraged or underestimated when it comes to pursuing a STEM education, and I thought the way the author approached this in connection to the elitist and stifling US collegiate system was particularly interesting. I thought this book had much to say about finding your passion a little later than everyone else once you're given room to flourish, and I appreciated that it was very self aware about walking the line between idealism and realism.
I also thought the dislike to love relationship was portrayed in a really tender, joyous manner and I loved our two leads together. To top it all off, I thought the author's portrayal of messy families was great and really added to the main character's portrayal; not once did she not feel like a real teenage girl.
If this is anything to go off on, I'm really looking forward to more of the author's YA work!
I also have to add that I loooved the narration for the most part and thought it really helped the story come to life.

Was I sucked in by this title and the hope that it would feature the emo music of 16 year old me’s dreams? Admittedly, yes.
Sadly, there was no emo music, but there was a sweet coming of age romance set inside the competitive world of high school robotics.

Following her parents separation, 17 year old Bel finds herself at a new (and very expensive) private school with no idea who she is and where she’s going. On the recommendation of an encouraging teacher, she finds herself on the school’s robotics team, a space dominated by ‘the boys’; students and teachers alike.

There she encounters everyone’s favorite wonder boy Teo Luna. Naturally, sparks fly (pun intended) as they teach one another about themselves whilst building their team’s battle robots.

The pacing was a little uneven at times and I found the opening set up a little too contrived. However, once her relationship with Teo and the robotics team developed, the story gained proper momentum.

Often, the overall message came off a bit heavy handed - I think at one point Bel actually says "It's about the friends we made..." and perhaps this overtness is suitable for its intended YA audience, though I prefer to give teenagers a little more credit!

Overall, this was a sweet, low-stakes YA romance with a diverse cast of characters and a fun setting.

I don’t read many YA books but I needed something that would be easy to listen to while working and this was exactly that. This story follows Bel as she enters her senior year at a new school and finds herself on the school’s robotics club. She begins to fall for Mateo, the captain of the club, and the feelings are mutual. During the year she must contend with blatant sexism, the pressure of college admissions, and navigating divorced parents.

The book is dual POV, but Bel’s story felt so much more central and important that Mateos. I really liked Bel, but I struggled with Mateo. I think some of my issue with Mateo was the voice actor for his sections gave him a slightly whiny lilt to his voice that was just grating. I wonder if I had read the book rather than listen to it if I would have liked him more. I really liked the voice actor for Bel’s sections and I think that made me more forgiving of Bel’s character flaws.

There were elements of this book that really worked for me. I enjoyed that we learned why the other girl on the robotic’s team didn’t like Bel and it was 100% logical rather than have her just be a mean girl. I do think that the pacing of the story was a bit uneven and the ending felt very rushed. I do struggle suspending my disbelief that teenage relationships are endgame and honestly didn’t find the wrap up at the end or the epilogue to be very satisfying or realistic.

Thank you to NetGalley and Recorded books for the audio ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Bel gets on the robotics team where she meets Tao. The developing romance was sweet to listen to. The characters were likable, Bel is quirky and Tao is too arrogant. They are so different, maybe it'll just work huh. This is a new to me author and I enjoyed this books so much. Her debut it such a good one, can't wait to see what she does next.

Oh boy get ready for doozy.

You cannot call a book My mechanical romance and then not have a single MCR reference. I just won't stand for it. Like didn't anyone tell the author that one of their characters needed to be obsessed with my chemical romance in order to allow this title. I was sitting here hoping for at least one reference to soothe 2000s teenage Anna but alas, there is not emo music. Blasphemy really.

Onto the story. I wanted to like this so bad but I didn't. I loved our girl MC. At least for the first half because she is badass and quirky and weird and unapologetically herself and I loved it. Like she makes weird references and randomly burst out in an accent and it was hilarious because of so relatable and I appreciate that level of strange but I feel like she lost some of that along the book.

I pretty much despised our dude MC and he can just piss off. He is an asshole and he's an asshole the entire book. Like I was hoping for some sort of redemption arc or character development but he doesn't learn a damn thing. He is a conceited selfish jerk who expects people to bow down to him and just listen to him because he's really super smart. He is really misogynistic and this is centered around a robotics team and there's a girl on the team who has bad ass and she's my favorite character even though she's villainized the entire book. Basically our guy MC, who I can't even remember his name I disliked him so much, shits on her the entire book and despite her being just as smart if not smarter than him never ever tells her that.

So boy and girl get together blah blah blah be this robotics team guy pretends to learn some things and is nice to his girlfriend but still misogynistic as fuck. He tries to make comments about how he needs to work on his privilege and how he can do better yet the only girl he seems to care about is his girlfriend and he still shits on all the other girls. Like there's a chance for him and the final scene to like finally address how smart this other girl is and he blows right past it does not even realize that it was an option and continues to be a selfish prick.

So as much as I wanted to applaud this book for talking about women in STEM it didn't really do it. It still maintains that culture of men who think that they are better than women and the one male character who had the potential and a POV to do something about it doesn't.

I got really frustrated with our girl MC because she knows that the MC is an asshole and she says so at the beginning of the book yet she somehow just automatically falls in love with him and thinks that he's the best thing ever? Gross.

I can sit here and complain that the title is shitty and it should have included some MCR references but the true issues here are the fact that this book is still incredibly misogynistic and despite attempting to create a narrative about women in STEM, It essentially said that if you are really pretty and likable that you'll be great but God forbid you don't smile.

I love seeing more books about girls in STEM, so when I saw this one I knew I had to read it. This is an important time in people's lives when they are getting ready to leave high school and trying to figure out what they would like to do in the future. One thing I really liked about this book is that a teacher saw potential in Bel and asked her to try out for the robotics team. Had that not happened she would never have done it on her own and she might not have realized her potential on this path. It was also interesting to see that not everything came easily to Bel she really had to work at it, and learn how to overcome some of her challenges to work well in the team.

I hate to see how females are treated in male dominant fields. It was interesting to see the dynamic between Bel and Neelam, and the differences they went through in the same club. I hope that we continue to see a more even balance between the genders in fields like robotics in the future. It's great that there are more books like this showing young girls that there are interesting fields of study in areas you might not have known about before.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

This book is so sweet and comical! I loved the characters and the storyline. Belle is so smart and I LOVE her. The romance in this book is wonderful. This was such a wonderful and fun read. I love the inclusion of STEM in a book, smart MC’s rule!

An adorable look at two teens in love with STEM and possibly each other.

This was my first Olivie Blake book and I was super impressed with Follmuth's ability to write so accessibly for a teen audience. This is her first YA and I can't imagine it was particularly easy to switch up her writing style after however many years of writing adult books. I've heard her most popular books such as The Atlas Six and Alone With You in the Ether have quite an elegant, cerebral quality that can be quite intimidating. While I cannot make personal comparisons to her other books, I did find this one extremely well written, which isn't necessarily always the case with YA debuts, but very centred and straightforward.

I think the strength in MMR really lies in its adorable, relatable characters. While I'm not nearly as smart as Bel, I really identified with her uncertainty over her future. Two weeks out of the university application deadline and she still hasn't applied. I thought her character arc was fantastic and her relationship with secondary characters felt very real to the teen experience (or from what I remember of it). I adored that she is a bit of a contradiction, she's empathetic and quiet but fierce and passionate when the need arises . The fact that she is so completely opposite of Matteo makes their rivals-to-lovers journey a lot sweeter. Matteo, in contrast to Bel, is extremely driven and eager for his future. However, due to his single-minded dedication to engineering he doesn't seem to have much time for anything else. Matteo is very charismatic and charming and was easy to see why so many of the characters gravitate towards him.

I really enjoyed listening to this, it was quite short so I was able to finish it in a day. I loved that the intelligent kids were the cool ones and that it had some nice found family themes. I thought the audiobook narration by Amielynn Abellera and Christopher Salazar was very engaging but only wish certain characterisations matched a little more (eg. The way the voice actors portrayed Dash was very different to the other).

I would 100% recommend!
Thank to Netgalley and RB Media.

Cute YA story! Love the cover. The narrator was good. Overall the story was really entertaining and deals with a lot of real life topics. I also liked it is a women in STEM involved!

I absolutely loved this book. It really captured the feeling of being a woman studying in a STEM field. It got how there aren't a ton of outright sexist comments that a lot of media tries to portray, but more of a subtle undermining. Alexene even captured the two paths women in STEM can take between Neelam and Bel. A lot of times, you're either seen as a bitch or a ditz and this book shows how it's just as emotionally taxing in either path.
The romance was also very cute. I liked the dual POV so we got a chance to see Teo grow to understand the gender disparity. I thought his growth was very realistic, as it's the same kind of realizations my husband had when he heard more about what it was like from me. It can be hard to notice the subtle things that make it hard for women in STEM, and seeing the impact it has on someone they care about can be difficult even if they aren't majorly contributing.

This super cute Romcom was a nice plate cleanser and I loved it.

The narrators where amazing, and the storyline was down to earth. I really enjoyed this story, maybe due to my son sharing one of the characters names.

I also liked the troupe of enemies to a couple. Even though this was a YA romance, I thought it had the right amount of real life situations. It kept me intrigued and wanting to know more about the main characters.

Bell and Teo were cute, and I loved that the story went past their High school era.

My Mechanical Romance is the perfect YA book - especially for teenage girls interested in STEM.

I wish I had read this book as a teenager. I feel it would have encouraged me to seek out a different path, or stay on a more academic route for longer. This book deals with a number of issues prevalent for teenagers and yet is relatable and more importantly enjoyable for someone like me, aged closer to thirty than twenty.

The characters parents have a similar situation to my own and I found the reactions and events that occurred around this was very realistic.

The romance aspect was adorable. Very well written. I found myself being a little bit cynical of the romance being realistic long term- until I remembered I was the same age as the main character when my now husband and I started dating.

I recently read another book by this author- under a different pen name - and in the acknowledgements she mentions something that becomes a theme in this book which is very cool.

The audiobook component was interesting. I liked the dual POV changing narrator but sometimes found the other character voices a little peculiar. Jamie's was an interesting tone. Not awful but at times hard to listen to- which may have been the idea.

If YA is your thing or you have a teenage girl who could do with some inspiring then this is the book for you.

I received a gifted copy of this audiobook from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Wow, this book was so dang cute. I'm still not much of a romance reader, but the story was excellent. The author did a great job of recreating the stress and pressure of trying to figure out the rest of your life at 18, I remember it well (I may have had a meltdown when trying to choose which college I was going to). Bel and Teo are a cute couple and the genuinely make each other better--It was refreshing to read a romance where there is nothing toxic about the relationship. While the content may be a little too YA for me at times, I really enjoyed this book.

Young adult novels have been my thing recently. I hadn’t read one for years, but they’ve been drawing my attention recently since they’re usually easy to pick up and put down. This one caught my eye because of the STEM incorporation.

I can honestly say that I enjoyed the book because it was light and it was fun to see the characters discover themselves, but I will say that I think I would’ve enjoyed it more if I read the physical book instead. The narrators killed the book a bit for me since it was awkward hearing adults trying to sound like kids. I also didn’t appreciate the stereotypical “nerdy” and nasally voices they made to indicate academically gifted students.

On the surface, this is pretty much like every other high school enemies to lovers story ever told in that we have a boy and a girl who initially can't stand each other but end up realizing that all the things that make them different are the things that make them perfect for each other.
It's well done and entertaining, so I would have liked it even if just stayed at that level. However, the author did a great job of weaving an entire tale of not being sure what you want to do at 18 and how (sometimes unconsciously) misogynistic men behave towards any girls in STEM. Bel's character arc is brilliant because you really see her grow into herself, find the things she's passionate about, and figure out that she can do what she wants with just her efforts.
The relationships between all the characters, not just Bel and Teo, are sweet and fun and add another level of enjoyment to the story that I appreciated.
The narration by Amielynn Abellera and Christopher Salazar really brings the story and characters to life. My one tiny complaint about it is that those moments when Abellera is reading about someone being excited or yelling she actually really raises the volume of her voice and it becomes a painful listening experience if you're wearing headphones.
Overall, it's very definitely a YA in the broadest strokes, but I highly recommend it for the great message about being proud to be a girl in STEM and showing that girls can do it better.

Happy thanks to NetGalley and RB Media Recorded Books for the early listen!

3.5/5 stars

A PG-13 read-alike for Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis.

Diverse reads:
- Bel is Philippino.
- Theo (sp?) is Latinx.