YA Contemporary – dinipandareads.

ARC Review: My Mechanical Romance by Alexene Farol Follmuth

Published on May 30, 2022May 30, 2022 by dinipandareads9 Comments

Special thanks to Holiday House for providing an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review!

Goodreads: My Mechanical Romance
Publisher: Holiday House
Published: 31 May 2022
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary

Panda Rating:

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Opposites attract in this battle-robot-building YA romance from the NYT best-selling author of The Atlas Six.

Bel would rather die than think about the future. College apps? You’re funny. Extracurriculars? Not a chance. But when she accidentally reveals a talent for engineering at school, she’s basically forced into joining the robotics club. Even worse? All the boys ignore Bel—and Neelam, the only other girl on the team, doesn’t seem to like her either.

Enter Mateo Luna, captain of the club, who recognizes Bel as a potential asset—until they start butting heads. Bel doesn’t care about Nationals, while Teo cares too much. But as the nights of after-school work grow longer and longer, Bel and Teo realize they’ve made more than just a combat-ready robot for the championship: they’ve made each other and the team better. Because girls do belong in STEM.

I buddy read with this Leslie and Julie who also had ARCs of the book and I’m so glad that we read this together! The topics and characters generated some good discussions between us that really helped me to figure out my thoughts/feelings about this book!

TL;DR: It took me a while to figure out how I felt about this book but ultimately, I think it was a great YA contemporary debut. This wasn’t just about girls/women in STEM but it covered complex biracial family dynamics and it had a sweet first-love romance between two characters from different backgrounds. Even though this wasn’t perfect, I liked how the author brought up what girls/women and POC in STEM experience, and I think it has the potential to generate some really great discussions amongst its readers.

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Book Review: Sunny Song Will Never Be Famous

Published on October 18, 2021October 20, 2021 by dinipandareads13 Comments

Goodreads: Sunny Song Will Never Be Famous
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Published: 01 June 2021
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary, Coming-of-Age

Panda Rating:

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Sunny Song’s Big Summer Goals:
1) Make Rafael Kim my boyfriend (finally!)
2) Hit 100K followers (almost there…)
3) Have the best last summer of high school ever

Not on Sunny’s list: accidentally filming a PG-13 cooking video that goes viral (#browniegate). Extremely not on her list: being shipped off to a digital detox farm camp in Iowa (IOWA??) for a whole month. She’s traded in her WiFi connection for a butter churn, and if she wants any shot at growing her social media platform this summer, she’ll need to find a way back online.

But between some unexpected friendships and an alarmingly cute farm boy, Sunny might be surprised by the connections she makes when she’s forced to disconnect.

I won a copy of this book in a Giveaway hosted by the author. I buddy it with my fellow winner Julie @ One Book More and it was so much fun. 😍 I can’t wait to read more by this author in the future!

CHECK OUT JULIE’S REVIEW!

TL;DR: Sunny Song Will Never Be Famous is a comedic and realistic coming-of-age story about growing up in the age fo a social media as a mid-level influencer and I thought it was an entertaining and entirely too relatable read! I have a feeling anyone who’s been on social media, no matter what age, will relate to Sunny and the kids at this camp in one way or another! Sunny was an interesting character who experiences such great growth and I loved the hopeful end-of-summer vibes the story concluded with. #TeamSunny for the win!

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Goodreads Monday – Tweet Cute by Emma Lord

Published on February 17, 2020February 17, 2020 by dinipandareads13 Comments

It’s the first Goodreads Monday of 2020, friends! This weekly meme was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners and it invites you to pick a book from your TBR and explain why you want to read it. Easy enough, right? Feel free to join in if you want to! I’ll be using a random number generator to pick my books from my insanely long GR Want-to-read list.

This week’s book is Tweet Cute by Emma Lord. The hype is super real for this book! I think I’ve already mentioned this book a few times in several posts so y’all know how excited I am to read this contemporary YA romance. It has a 4.12 star average with 3.4k+ ratings and 1.4k+ reviews.

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