Title: Love in English
Author: Maria E. Andreu
Type: Fiction
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Date published: February 2, 2021
A complimentary physical copy of this book was kindly provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Sixteen-year-old Ana has just moved to New Jersey from Argentina for her Junior year of high school. She’s a poet and a lover of language—except that now, she can barely understand what’s going on around her, let alone find the words to express how she feels in the language she’s expected to speak.
All Ana wants to do is go home—until she meets Harrison, the very cute, very American boy in her math class. And then there’s her new friend Neo, the Greek boy she’s partnered up with in ESL class, who she bonds with over the 80s teen movies they are assigned to watch for class (but later keep watching together for fun), and Altagracia, her artistic and Instagram-fabulous friend, who thankfully is fluent in Spanish and able to help her settle into American high school.
But is it possible that she’s becoming too American—as her father accuses—and what does it mean when her feelings for Harrison and Neo start to change? Ana will spend her year learning that the rules of English may be confounding, but there are no rules when it comes to love.
⤖ My Review ⬻
Maria E. Andreu’s Love in English was both sweet and heart-wrenching! On one hand, there was a certain innocence to the main character Ana and her classmates. On the other hand, the struggles Ana had to face as ayoung immigrant, and also some of her parents’ struggles (at least those we see) really made my heart hurt.
I immigrated to Canada when I was in seventh grade, so I was around 2 years younger than Ana, but we were definitely close enough in age for her experiences to throw me right back. It was difficult, and I’m glad that Love in English didn’t skim over that! Like Ana, my family and I moved to North America for a better life, but it’s important not to ignore that we also left people and places we loved behind in the process!
Ana’s struggles with feeling like she didn’t belong in the US but also after a time no longer belonged back home in Argentina also really resonated. Even now that I’ve lived in Canada for many years, I don’t feel like I wholly belong here or back in Austria or Romania (where I spent the majority of my childhood).
The poetry that was peppered in throughout Love in English was not only beautifully written (as well as the prose), but it also really amped up those emotions Ana was feeling. At times I struggled with some of Ana’s choices, but I would mostly get over it once I reminded myself that she’s much younger than myself and that I also wasn’t so wise when I was young and less experienced. Overall, I highly recommend!