This audiobook was super cute! I really really enjoyed it! It kept me hooked the entire time and I loved it!

I was hoping this book would be adorable with women in STEM rep and it delivered! The characters and their relationship were cute, their dislike and gradual like for each other was executed very well. It reminded me of the Love Hypothesis in the best way and it was just so cute, I loved it!

cute book but not a new favourite.

There wasn't really anything wrong with this, it just also wasn't anything super amazing. I enjoyed it but it will forget absolutely everything about this book in 2-3 business days.

Its very niche as of now, i mean a cute YA highschool romance. rivals to lovers, diversity, and stem/robotics centered. rich boy x poor girl, different family dynamics. All of that representation is great to have for. Ive yet to read other books by this author but I believe they're also full of diverse people, characteristics, storylines and tropes.

(Disclaimer, this review is about the audiobook version. I will admit that audiobooks tend to end up getting rated lower by me because i pay attention to them less)

Thank you NetGalley and Recorded Books for providing me access to this audiobook in exchange for my honest review before release date.

Um… A reread here and THAT WAS SO CUTE ONCE AGAIN!!

So, all the praises to this author for her amazing work, loved by me, a reader who just can’t like romance books. The narrators are also both so brilliant! The exact way I imagined the main characters’ voices to be.

I think i loved this book mainly because not only is the romance very sweet, it has a lot of discussions sprinkled all over the plot. All the characters have troubles of different types about their identity, future and even societal roles. Over all this, the plot is engaging, keeps you awake and reading. I loved that the author didn’t leave STEM just as a vague concept (*cough* hazelwood) but took the sciences of physics and engineering to an interesting level of robotics contests.

All the characters were distinct and three-dimensional enough for me to fall in love with them all. However, my heart keeps Neelam in the best of its places. Look, I, like Bel, was never told to ‘smile more’ or ‘be more ladylike’, but the portrayal was so well done that i was screaming into my pillow. This is how writing is done, folks.

The writing was overall great, despite my dislike for first-person narration in present tense. I liked the texting aspect of it, which shows texting in people my age accurately. However, one problem I had with the writing was the “quirky” factors: exaggerated amount of question and exclamation marks made me feel like i was reading a diary entry, which in my eyes is a little too informal for a novel. In addition to that, I found punctuation to be a little garbage. There were too many missing commas to count. I love commas. One more slight issue was Bel’s train of thoughts and diction, with he only building blocks being “like”, “what” and “huh” if you want to spice things up a little. Yes, she is characterised that way but I personally thought it was kind of unnecessary, and her uncertainty and lack of confidence could be shown in other ways.

The best theme is the uncertainty of everyone. I related too much to Teo in this, and I know exactly what to do with my life in the next twenty years. But a lot of people aren’t this way, and that is absolutely fine. I used to be astonished at people knowing nothing about their future until I met people who are so, so clueless that I had to empathise with the idea. And Teo learns to do the same, which makes him even more adorable than he already is.

Independence of Bel and every other woman in this AMAZED me. I’m trying my best for a non-spoilers review, but Bel is so strong that she chooses something less ideal in exchange for her independence. Apparently, she got this from her mother, an ER nurse, who takes care of her children alone while being an amazing (or close to) mother.

Also, Ms Voss. Oh my god, we need a lot more teachers like her. I loved the contrast she showed against the annoying character of Mac, the amazing advice and endless support she gave. And lastly, the lack of support for women in STEM was explored so well in different aspects/dimensions.

Special thanks to the author for writing this gem, and Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I have really mixed feelings about this book and audiobook, though my opinion definitely strays more positively in the end. Narration-wise, the narrator for Bel definitely had a really unique voice that I really liked, though she sometimes sounded a bit like she wasn't paying attention to the story, and also sometimes had voices for side characters that ,are them sound like children (specifically Dash, but also one of her brothers.) The narrator for Teo also had moments where the narration was really weird, and sometimes emphasis on certain phrases made him sound like he was narrating a children's picture book. The quality was also a bit robotic, though that may be the fault of Netgalley.

As for the book, I felt at times that the language was a bit too juvenile for YA, and I would've liked to see more feminism in the second half since the first half was a lot heavier with it; however i loved the romance between Teo and Bel. I also noticed that the author misused the word "heteronormativity" twice, and it surprised me that the editors didn't catch that. Both times she used it as a synonym for patriarchy, which just isn't the same at all though they are connected. Overall I will likely recommend this story on my platform despite my mixed feelings.

"Take up your own space, Bel. Don't let other people tread over it."

I really REALLY enjoyed this book! It was such a fun and easy read. Although I do wish the academic rivals to lovers bit was more explored (since it's one of my favorite tropes of all time) and that it took longer for Teo and Bel to become friends.

The romance between the main characters was just adorable; it's dual POV, so you can really get into both of the characters' heads and see their relationship progression from two perspectives. I really liked that the book wasn't entirely focused on romance but also on the struggles women in STEM face every day by being in a male-dominated field.

The epilogue made me so happy I loved the fact it was set 2 years after the main plot ended. Overall, I would definitely recommend reading it, especially to people that are still in high school.

As for the audiobook itself, I wasn't a big fan, some of the voicing choices were a bit too much in my opinion.

I ADORED this book!!! The young girls of color in STEM rep is so well done in this book!!! Ostensibly an opposites attract YA romance between two high school seniors who get forced to work together, it also has great messages about the hurdles girls face trying to enter STEM fields, especially girls of color.

When one of her teachers notices how talented Bel is, she coerces her to join the robotics club where she meets Teo and discovers a love for engineering. The romance between Bel and Teo is sweet and wholesome. Both help challenge the other to expand their horizons and find the courage to take chances. I also really enjoyed the friendship that developed between Bel and her other female teammate Neelam. These two started off butting heads but eventually form a bond as they show the boys how great girls can be at STEM too.

Perfect for fans of Jennifer Yen's Love, decoded or the Disney movie Big Hero 6. The robot building and competing storyline was so fun and this book is sure to help inspire a new generation of girls in STEM!! Great on audio narrated by Amielynn Abellera and Christopher Salazar. Much thanks to NetGalley and Holiday House/RB Media for my advance review copies!

I was lucky enough to get both an audio and ebook arc of this book and I absolutely loved it in both formats!

First of all the characters are genuinely so adorable and believable together! And you get to know not only the two point of view characters but all of the other characters as well AND you get to see each and every one of them fully rounded through the different points of view! The cultures and interests of the side characters are just about as explicit and interesting as the main characters.

Second of all the message and discussions about college in this book are fantastic. As a coming of age story, it shows a wonderful amount of diversity in whether people know where they're going, are completely lost, or are somewhere in between. Also and this is dumb but if you care you care while this is inherently a book about the importance and joy that STEM/Robotics brings both Tao and Bel it doesn't look down on people who decide not to go to college, go to a college that isn't the most prestigious and it doesn't for a second imply that the STEM fields are inherently more important than Humanities. This is a MAJOR plus for me because so many academic-driven YA books miss this by only showing singlar acceptable paths.

Third of all I really liked that there was a flash-forward at the end and we got to see Bel and Tao together but also competing. Because their banter is incredible and I think that a lot of YA books miss out on whether or not the romance ends at graduation.

Fourth of all, THE BIRD MOTIFS!!!! MY HEART <3<3<3!!!

Fifth and finally, Amielyn Abellera and Christopher Salazar were both amazing narrators! If you like audiobooks this is a great one to get but even if you don't this one it's a good audiobook if you're just trying out audiobooks for the first time.

4.5 ⭐️

“Today she’s wearing a sundress that’s kind of an ugly color, like rust or copper. It’s certainly nothing I would choose, though it looks sort of nice on her. Like a sunset.”
“He nudges me and I realize I missed the smell of him. Laundry detergent and boy. (Hormones are honestly the worst thing anyone’s ever invented.)”
“He rifles his hair and oh no, oh no, oh no. It looks so soft.”

SO. DAMN. CUTE.
God this book was so adorable and funny and just 🥰. I have so little tolerance for teenagers and their aNgSt, but wow this was so much fun.

It’s so easy to forget/ignore that teenagers suffer the most while being virtually incapable of helping themselves, and in their haste to be all grown up, they forget that they still are, essentially, CHILDREN, which only adds to their own difficulties. But it’s not their fault, really. Like here, especially with Teo taking on more than I could fathom to take on myself now at 23, let alone at 17. Let the poor boy rest ffs. I loved his ending so so much. It felt bittersweet at first but as he himself comes to realize, it was all for the best, and ultimately made him see himself more clearly.

BEL. I love her. She deserves the whole world and I love her. Such a refreshing mix of quirky and badass and awkward and smart aka THREE DIMENSIONAL. It is so devastatingly uncommon to find a female teen protagonist that is as real as Bel is. All of her relationships were just so interesting and dynamic. Her questioning what she would do with the next chapter of her life was relatable and, again, real. Girl’s just trying to get through the day, she does not care for your constant, anxiety-inducing questions, seriously.

MVP: DASH, MY CHILD.
““That’s my mom,” he says, pointing at a woman in the crowd with dimples and a carbon copy of Dash’s dreamy expression. “She’s really embarrassing,” he adds, though he’s smiling broadly when he catches her eye and she points to a T-shirt that reads DARIUSH’S MOM.”
LITERALLY ME I WILL DIE FOR HIM

(Thank you to NetGalley and RB Media for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.)