"He stared at her. This was not normal. Was this an American thing or a Dovie thing, to acknowledge fear?"
Learning to Swear in America, by Katie Kennedy, is the story of 17-year-old Yuri Strelnikov, a physics prodigy from Russia who is sent to America to help stop an asteroid that's about to take out California. Having earned the title of doctor before he even left his teens, Yuri knows very little about being a normal kid. His goals included winning a Nobel Prize and don't include girls. Then Dovie Collum, a 16-year-old artist with hippie parents, enters his life and Yuri begins to question the way he lives. Dovie is Yuri's opposite in so many ways. Where he is careful and precise she is full of life and color, and now Yuri must deal with his feeling for her while solving the little problem of the asteroid.
This was very cute book. Teenage me would have gobbled it right up. Yuri and Dovie are a perfectly paired "opposites attract" couple and I loved how much he took from his relationship with her and her brother, Lennon. I also loved the hidden tender moments with Yuri where his fears leak out. Despite his brilliance he's just a kid. He struggles greatly with this through the entire book, both feeling like he's smarter than everyone and feeling lost and alone at the same time. And as if that wasn't hard enough on him, he's a kid who's trying to keep a lot of people from dying. And a kid who is in American for the first time. And a kid who is unexpectedly falling in love. All of that combined made Yuri a very likable character.
This book was equal parts SciFi and RomCom, and it worked. It was almost like reading two different stories in the same book...the Yuri and the asteroid story and the Yuri and Dovie story. It was well written and I feel like Katie Kennedy did an excellent job creating her characters, so much so that they carry the story forward more than the giant asteroid hurtling towards earth. And that's exactly how I like my characters.
This was book 27 out of 25 for my 2019 reading challenge! A fairly big chunk of this year's reading has been science fiction. It went well with the moon landing anniversary. But for fall and winter I'm stockpiling a whole lot of fantasy, including the Shadow and Bone Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo. I'd love to hear what everyone else has on the TBR pile! We all know that fall and winter are the best reading seasons!
This was very cute book. Teenage me would have gobbled it right up. Yuri and Dovie are a perfectly paired "opposites attract" couple and I loved how much he took from his relationship with her and her brother, Lennon. I also loved the hidden tender moments with Yuri where his fears leak out. Despite his brilliance he's just a kid. He struggles greatly with this through the entire book, both feeling like he's smarter than everyone and feeling lost and alone at the same time. And as if that wasn't hard enough on him, he's a kid who's trying to keep a lot of people from dying. And a kid who is in American for the first time. And a kid who is unexpectedly falling in love. All of that combined made Yuri a very likable character.
This book was equal parts SciFi and RomCom, and it worked. It was almost like reading two different stories in the same book...the Yuri and the asteroid story and the Yuri and Dovie story. It was well written and I feel like Katie Kennedy did an excellent job creating her characters, so much so that they carry the story forward more than the giant asteroid hurtling towards earth. And that's exactly how I like my characters.
This was book 27 out of 25 for my 2019 reading challenge! A fairly big chunk of this year's reading has been science fiction. It went well with the moon landing anniversary. But for fall and winter I'm stockpiling a whole lot of fantasy, including the Shadow and Bone Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo. I'd love to hear what everyone else has on the TBR pile! We all know that fall and winter are the best reading seasons!
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