Love in English — Teen Book Review

Ana, a sixteen year old Argentinian, is trying to find the words to express herself in her new home, New Jersey. Being a poet and a lover of language herself, it feels even harder to not know what to say. But when she meets Harrison, the cute American boy in her math class, she starts not knowing what to say in a whole different way. Then there’s Neo. The Greek Cypriot boy who shares an ESL class with her and from there her heart starts getting confused. There’s no instruction manual to the heart and no map to show how to navigate it, just the raw teenage feelings Ana is stuck with while trying to master this new scene and language entirely. Through this quirky adventure through feelings, Ana will learn and know what it means to become truly “American.”

Love in English is an interesting read with the heartfelt descriptions to back it up. The book shows you a peek through what it may be like to be completely new, not even knowing the native language, but trying your best anyway. The interactions are cute and I thought the author sufficiently summed up what it was like to be completely confused and totally mess things up. But I felt dissatisfied when I finished. I enjoyed the ending and felt happy, but what led up to that point was the dissatisfying part. I felt the plot was simply uncompelling and the way the author writes Ana’s feelings are super dramatic. Ana just met the boy and she’s fantasizing about kissing him? Either Ana’s feelings work fast or it’s just plain rushed. Also the way how the author incorporates Spanish is interesting but inconvenient. Ana has full blown conversations in Spanish and the fact that I can’t understand any of it is not helpful in the slightest. And how Ana constantly compares everything she sees in America to the super cliché, super stereotypical, very dramatic American movies she’s seen in Argentina. It frustrates me that she bases everything she experiences off it and I know that she doesn’t have anything else to base it off of but she has to realize that things are very different from what she sees in movies. Although I thought the plot was intriguing, I don’t think I would read this again.

2.5 stars.