Love In English

Love in English by Maria E. Andreu

LOVE IN ENGLISH is a young adult novel layered with themes of cultural identity and finding your voice in any language. 

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.

With playful and poetic breakouts exploring the idiosyncrasies of the English language, Love in English tells a story that is simultaneously charming and romantic, while articulating a deeper story about what it means to become “American”.

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Reviews

“The teen love triangle at the center of this warm and humorous novel by Andreu is threaded with experiences that accompany acclimation to a new school and country. But as a budding poet (her journals punctuate the chapters), Ana’s real love affair is with language itself. Andreu captures Ana’s cultural and linguistic roller coaster with eloquence and precision, as Ana wonders “if learning one language doesn’t sometimes mean forgetting a little bit of another,” a process described as bittersweetly as coming-of-age itself.” — Publishers Weekly

“The novel, focusing on Ana’s experience as a documented immigrant, effectively explores the character’s struggle to navigate unlike cultures and languages while she learns to communicate in English, discovers different facets of herself, falls a bit in love, and ultimately finds her footing—and her voice—in the U.S. A wholesome immigration story with a healthy dose of romance on the side.”  — Kirkus Reviews

I Must Betray You

 

I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys

Trust no one.

Tell no one

Spies are everywhere.

Romania, 1989.

Communist regimes are crumbling across Europe. Seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu dreams of becoming a writer, but Romanians aren’t free to dream; they are bound by rules and force. Amidst the tyrannical dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu in a country governed by isolation and fear, Cristian is blackmailed by the secret police to become an informer. He’s left with only two choices: betray everyone and everything he loves—or use his position to creatively undermine the most notoriously evil dictator in Eastern Europe.

Cristian risks everything to unmask the truth behind the regime, give voice to fellow Romanians, and expose to the world what is happening in his country. He eagerly joins the revolution to fight for change when the time arrives. But what is the cost of freedom?

Reviews 

New York Times Book Review 

“The power of I Must Betray You [is] it doesn’t just describe the destabilizing effects of being spied on; it will make you experience them too.”

Shelf Awareness 

“Sepetys keeps readers riveted to this vivid, heartbreaking and compelling novel, locked into every meticulously researched detail . . . Through poetic writing, sympathetic characters, revolutionary plot and pacing, it grips the heart and soul and leaves one breathless.” 

(starred review)

Oprah Daily

“Ruta is passionate about the power of history and fiction to foster awareness and connectivity. In this book, she opens a startling window into the real-life coerced citizen spy network—including teenagers as young as thirteen—that bred an atmosphere of paranoia and fear, as people were forced to inform on one another.” 

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