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”.
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
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