{"id":38634,"date":"2021-02-10T23:31:53","date_gmt":"2021-02-11T03:31:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=38634"},"modified":"2021-02-10T23:34:44","modified_gmt":"2021-02-11T03:34:44","slug":"review-of-this-is-my-brain-in-love-by-i-w-gregorio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=38634","title":{"rendered":"Review of This Is My Brain In Love, by I. W. Gregorio"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This Is My Brain in Love<\/em><\/p>\n

by I. W. Gregorio
\nread by Diane Doen and Zeno Robinson<\/p>\n

Hachette Audio, 2020. 9 hours, 30 minutes.
\nReview written November 16, 2020, from a library eaudiobook
\nStarred Review
\n2021 Schneider Family Award Winner
\n2020 Sonderbooks Stand-out<\/a>:
\n\t#9 General Teen Fiction<\/p>\n

This book begins at the start of summer before Jocelyn Wu\u2019s Junior year of high school. Her father tells her that their family restaurant is failing and they will have to move back to the big city where he worked for her uncle. Jos has finally made friends in Utica, and she is not ready to uproot everything and move back. She asks her father to give her a chance. If they can establish an internet presence and advertise at events, maybe they can turn things around.<\/p>\n

Jos doesn\u2019t think she has the expertise to turn things around by herself, so she convinces her dad to advertise for a summer intern. When Will Dominici applies, she doesn\u2019t expect an attractive boy her age whose mother is Nigerian and father Italian. As they work together, they are more and more attracted to one another \u2013 which doesn\u2019t go over well with Jos\u2019s dad.<\/p>\n

This is a delightful teen romance. The two narrators alternating Will\u2019s and Jocelyn\u2019s perspectives add to the fun. Something distinctive about this book is that both teens are dealing with mental illness. Will has been seeing a therapist for anxiety disorder since he was eight years old. He notices that Jos is awfully hard on herself and starts showing warning signs of depression, though she\u2019s resistant to that idea. But the love story ends up being a natural frame for talking about mental illness and how it\u2019s hard \u2013 but necessary \u2013 to ask for help.<\/p>\n

I listened to this on eaudiobook, so I couldn\u2019t renew as easily as a physical copy. But I didn\u2019t even resent cramming in the last three hours to get it finished before it expired. Maybe it was a little unrealistic that two teens could turn the business around, and throwing in sinister developers who wanted to replace the family restaurant felt a little less realistic, but it\u2019s actually kind of easy to believe that teens know more about internet advertising than immigrant adults. And it all adds up to a feel-good listening experience.<\/p>\n

The narrators were excellent, and I appreciated that the narrator for Jocelyn\u2019s viewpoint could quote her parents and Amah speaking Mandarin without missing a beat.<\/p>\n

This book made me want to try some Potstickers.<\/p>\n

theNOVL.com<\/a>
\nLBYR.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Find this review on Sonderbooks<\/a> at: www.sonderbooks.com\/Teens\/this_is_my_brain_in_love.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.<\/p>\n

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