User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
(Throwback Review) This novel tells us the story of Ana, who is a Sixteen-year-old who recently moved to New Jersey from Argentina. She is also a poet and loves the Spanish language. She, unfortunately, struggles a lot in dealing with English in America. To make matters worse, she falls into a love triangle with an American boy named Harrison and a Greek boy named Neo. Will Ana be able to tackle all the obstacles in her new life in the USA? This book will give you the answer to it.
The story of expatriates has always been an important topic that authors loved to write about. Jhumpa Lahiri, Kiran Desai, Colm Tóibín, and many other authors have written some outstanding books on this topic. We might think that it will be easy to write such a novel where the protagonist struggles to cope with the new place where she/he has to relocate. It is comparatively easy to connect with the reader from that particular diaspora. In my opinion, it is still a risky way to write a novel with this theme as there is a high probability that it won't connect with the people outside the particular diaspora.
It is in this area where I can say that Maria E. Andreu did a splendid job. If you are someone outside the Latinx diaspora in the USA, you might think that she is simply exaggerating the problems (like Ana's intense struggle for studying English), and you might feel esoteric in acknowledging the mindset of the protagonist. The author brilliantly plays with such reader's psyches by exemplifying them with empirical evidence by bombarding them with Spanish lines that many readers are not familiar with to teach them what precisely a language barrier means to make it veristic. What I learned from this book 1) Culture shock 
This is a crucial topic that the author is trying to portray through this novel. She has done it brilliantly. All the subtle problems that emigrant faces and their futile attempts to overcome them are dealt with finesse by the author. The language, climate, and economic shocks Ana faces will make us empathize with her. We can also see the fear of parents that their children will forget their mother tongue and their native culture.
“She could be saying anything. Hearing English here so fast it is impolssible to understand.”
2) How learning a new language can alter the overrall dynamics of the family? It is said that the best way to learn a new language is by practicing it with your friends and your family. When Ana's family decided to talk only in English in their house, the gregarious and garrulous family all of a sudden changed into a hermetic silent one. Everyone thought it was better to remain silent than to struggle to express their opinions in a new language.
“The family dinners have gotten pretty quiet under the English only blanket. If you can't think of the word in English and most of the time I can't and neither can my mum, silence is a safe alternative"
3) How the decision to get a bigger life in a foreign country are psychologically affecting the children? This is a very important topic that needs in-depth analysis. We can see how deeply children are affected when one or both parents relocate to a foreign country without taking their children. Ana's father moved to the USA three years before Ana came to the USA. She was watching him like a strange person when she saw him after three long years. Children who are not mentally strong will have to face many psychological problems when they are pitched into a similar tumultuous situation.
“I knew this man, my father and also I did not. He knew me and also he did not. ”
My favourite three lines from this book “They come here for a ‘better life.' But better life is not quite right. It makes me feel that my family and friends back home are something that needed bettering. I don't know whether it is better here. There is a different word I would choose, a 'bigger life.'"
“That was not quite what I wanted to say.”
“Then anger was about worry. This anger doesn’t look like that it is about worry. It is about fury. ”
What could have been better? I felt that the love triangle involving Ana, Harrison, and Neo was not well written like the rest of the book and had a lot of hackneyed phrases seen in romantic fiction. Some areas that described their relationship seemed extraneous and farcical and should have been edited out. If the author had written this part better, her fastidious attempt in writing this novel would have been better rewarded.
Rating 3/5 This is a must-read book if you are a Hispanic or Latinx planning to settle in the USA.
Rating: really liked it
Huh. I never thought English could be so complicated in the eyes of others.
Maybe I shouldn't make fun of my mom for her English😂
who am i kidding? it's hilarious
This book really did a good job in showing how much people struggle moving to a new country and being forced to learn a new language in order to try blending in.
Ana is a 16 year old high schooler whose just moved from Argentina to New Jersey, U.S. which is the result of her father who she hasn't seen in 3 years. Considering she's been speaking Spanish her whole life and has only started learning English for a few years, she of course isn't used to it, so Ana is put into ESL.
From there she's able to connect/relate more to the others because they also are in the same situation she's in and so she meets Neo, a boy from Greece. Of course they bond well together. But then she also meets Harrison, ~le americane boy~, and instantly has a crush on him...can you see where I'm going?
aye, it's the horrid
love triangle.
But the good thing is that it didn't really play a huge part in the story, or maybe it didn't feel like that to me, since this was short anyways. It was mostly just Ana trying to understand whether she was in love or not and what really is love.
I could tell that the author was putting in her own experiences into this book and I liked how she did it. I would say I can't imagine how humiliating it is to not understand what others are saying while they laugh at you, but ahahahaha it's happened a few times *war flashbacks*
cant say i didn't deserve it tho lolIn the end I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either, hence the rating of 3 stars. I couldn't really care much for the characters but that's probably just me. I think for those who can really relate Ana, they'd love her and her growth throughout the novel.
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Thank you Harper Collins Canada for sending me this ARC in exchange for an honest review!!
Rating: really liked it
When a book opens with a giant disclaimer as this does, one has to wonder if there’s been some sort of controversy in the lead up to its publication. I requested an ARC of this book based on the blurb alone; in fact I’d never heard of the author nor the book until I read the Harper360 YA newsletter that gets sent out to bloggers. And I loved the blurb so made my request...
But before I discuss the book let’s get to that big old disclaimer.
In it the author discusses how the main character of Love in English shares a similar backstory to her life... but the main character of Love in English has a much simplified backstory. According to the author her parents moved from Spain to Argentina when they were both toddlers and thusly grew up in Argentina along with the extended families of both. Her parents moved to the USA during her mother’s pregnancy but the author happened to be born in Spain because her mother was visiting there for a number of weeks while pregnant. Soon after her birth she moved to the USA with her mum (with a visitor’s visa rather than full documentation) and aged 6 the author visited Argentina with her mum for a funeral but could not get back to the USA. Two years later at the age of 8 the author crossed the US-Mexican border as an undocumented immigrant with her mother and they rejoined her father. According to her she had no English at the time and it is this lack of understanding of the English language that informs this book.
So while this book is seemingly informed by a genuine life experience of being undocumented and having to learn a whole new language in a foreign country, this author does mention that they have white privilege which is no doubt why there is some discussion (that I have subsequently seen in other early reviews) about this book and questions surrounding the nationality of the main character versus the nationality of the author, i.e. issues surrounding own voices narratives of Latinx experiences.
The book itself focuses on the story of teenage Ana who moves from Argentina to the USA with her mother. Her father has been living and working in the USA for a number of years and is now able to send for them as they have the correct documentation. The plot follows Ana as she struggles to learn English and navigate the waters of high school with this great language block.
One of the things I very much enjoyed in this book was the use of Spanish throughout the novel. As someone who doesn’t understand a word of Spanish it really helped me to empathise with Ana’s plight where she could only understand half sentences and follow things in a broken fashion.
I very much enjoyed Ana’s attempts to get to know her new schoolmates. It was interesting to see how some of them (the Americans) had certain preconceptions about her because they filled in the gaps themselves of what they thought Ana was trying to say. And then to compare that with the other students who like Ana were also non-native English speakers that were trying to navigate high school for themselves.
I would have liked to have had more interactions with Ana’s new friend Altagracia as I found it very difficult to get a true sense of why these two became friends. I personally felt that a little too much time was spent on the love triangle between Ana and the two boys, Harrison and Neo, and would love to have seem a greater emphasis on female friendship and the value of that to a teenage girl.
One aspect I did quite like was the strained relationship between Ana and her father. It was very distressing showing how they didn’t seem to know each other after living so many years apart and to me really emphasised the greatest sadness of people who have to make the choice to leave their families behind just so they can create better opportunities for that same family in the future.
Overall this was a very quick and enjoyable read but one that I wish could have delved a little deeper into some more of the emotions behind the characters.
Three stars.
*An e-copy was kindly provided to me by the publisher via Edelweiss+ for honest review* Publishing 4th February 2021, Balzer + Bray (Harper Collins)
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Rating: really liked it
3.5 Stars
Well that was some lovely writing!
I loved Ana's journey and thought she was a relatable character. In my opinion, the author did a very good job of portraying the experience of being in a country where the language predominantly spoken around you, is not your own.
I lived in Japan for a year and it really is like you are moving in a 'bubble of silence'. My husband won't be impressed I am going to write this, but all these years later it still amuses me, so sorry mate, I'm telling it. Before we went to live in Japan I dutifully learnt some useful phrases e.g. "Do you speak English?" and "Where is the ___?" among many others. My husband was less studious. He was trying to buy something or get directions one day and had a huge amount of trouble getting his message across. He came home and was telling me about the experience. He told me he had been asking if they spoke English. When he told me what he had been saying in Japanese, I cracked up and informed him he had been repeatedly asking 'Where is the English? Where is the English? W h e r e i s t h e E n g l i s h?' He said the lovely people he had approached were so patient and sincere in their attempts to help my floundering husband as he tried to make himself understood with careful pronunciation of a completely bizarre question. We experienced nothing but kindness and generosity, and our experience of living in Japan will remain one of the most wonderful experiences of my life. The point is, I could relate to Ana as she struggled to make sense of new and tricky language.
Maria has some lovely ways of expressing feelings and I found myself literally saying, "how lovely", at various points throughout the novel.
I really wish there hadn't been a love triangle but it wasn't hideously offensive. A nice heartwarming story about finding your place.
I am aware that there might be some ownvoice issues but I do not know the particulars so it might pay to read some other reviews to get some clarity around this.
Rating: really liked it
To claim to be Argentinian-American when your bio actually says "She was born in Spain,
lived in Argentina for two years, and crossed the Mexican border into the U.S. at the age of eight", you gotta have a lot of nerve.
This book is not ownvoices, but if you want to support one, you can add Once Upon a Quinceañera by Monica Gomez-Hira to your list.
Rating: really liked it
Love in English is about the words we use and misuse - understand and misunderstand; and the words we use to shield ourselves from the truth.
When Ana's father won the immigration lottery and they moved to New Jersey, Ana had to leave her old way of life and all of her friends and extended family behind. In Argentina, she was a model student and had a full and happy life. Ana had watched American movies in Argentina, but the reality of America left her bewildered, lonely and homesick.
Ana is a poet. Words are important to her, but in America, she is an outsider, no longer able to communicate. The author vividly conveys the frustration and isolation that new immigrants feel because of the language barrier. All those hashtags in place of the words Ana could not understand were very effective. Ana's father put a lot of pressure on Ana to assimilate and she is irritated by her father's insistence on "English only" at the dinner table. The result? Conversation all but ceases. She feels guilty for thinking:
We don't have to do it this way.
We don't have to make it so hard.
We don't have to erase everything about us. At least not all at once.I thought deeply about Ana's plight as I drove to the bank or the grocery store, realizing how much I took for granted. I thought back to how difficult it was to learn to physically SPEAK French, although I had studied it all of my life, and I already knew how to speak another Latin-based language (Portuguese) somewhat fluently. Memorizing reams of words and sentences are not enough. You literally have to spend hours and hours, putting your hesitant, rotten pronunciation out there for the world to ridicule, in order to fully master and fluently speak a new language.
Poor Ana and the rest of her classmates had to attend regular classes at the same time that they were trying to learn the English language. I agree with their off-the-wall ESL teacher, Mr. T., that these students exhibited great courage and stamina. I watched with interest the relationship between Ana, Harrison and Neo. What in those relationships was stardust, movies, and teen drama, versus real life?
The Author's Note beautifully sums up this very well-written, thought provoking novel:
"This is a story of wanting to find yourself, of feeling excluded, or worrying whether you're enough. It is also about how the people we meet and love and need on the journey mean everything. There is no language and every language for that.
...... We find many ways to say the things we feel. But what's important is not what separates us, or the particulars of how you say a thing or how I do. What's important is that in our similarly beating hearts, love sounds like love without any words."
I really enjoyed this novel, and took my time reading it, savoring each well-chosen word. This is not a light, frothy YA novel - far from it! I highly, highly, highly recommend this novel. As the Bard said: All's well that ends well.....!"
Rating: really liked it
Disclaimer: This is my sister's book, so I'm biased, but being biased doesn't make me wrong. "Love in English" is an inspiring story. There are so many immigrant stories rife with tragedy and heartache. While those stories are true and necessary, it's also important to tell the immigrant stories full of joy and hope. That's what "Love in English" does.
"Love in English" is a love story, a love letter to the English language, and a story about fitting in. It explores the quirks of the English language with humor and humanity, and reflects on the constantly shifting immigrant experience with reverence and wistfulness.
"Love in English" shows that there is always something lost when people move to a new country, but that there is also something new to be gained. It is sometimes sad and hard, but it is beautiful.
Rating: really liked it
It’s a sweet young adult story revolves around a Spanish teenager Ana who just migrated from Argentina to New Jersey along with her family. Living in a house that’s fully speaking in Spanish, she’s been facing a series of setbacks that inhibit her from expressing herself clearly in English.
She thought her English is quite good because she can understand all kinds of American movies as long as they’re subtitled. Contradictorily, on her first day of school, English suddenly becomes complicated for her as everyone here apparently be speaking so fast that it’s impossible for her to catch up. Attending ESL classroom in the pursuit to improve her English, she discovers something profound beyond the language itself – poetry!
Written in the first point of view, we can experience the struggles encountered by Ana as a non-native English speaker. I like how the dialogues presented when she couldn’t understand certain English words spoken by those native speakers. These words are omitted by hashtags # and it makes readers feel intrigued by what’s the other speaker talking about. It’s done very realistically when those hashtags slowly diminish halfway throughout the book indicating the improvement in her English. All thanks to Mr. T’s entertaining ESL activities. I think ESL educators can utilise these activities into their lesson plans too.
There’s a love triangle fest here. Though I didn’t hate it because the stereotypical American boy and the Greek-speaking boy do contribute to a healthy dose of comedy and angst. This book is both hilarious and educational. With the simple use of language to create an amusing set of diverse characters and a fast-paced plot, this book deserves 4/5 stars.
Thank you to Times Reads for the copy in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: really liked it
I can really relate to the topic at hand so I can't wait for this one!
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Rating: really liked it
I'm trying to read more stories about language and belonging, those are near and dear to me! Very excited for the book, I'll be back after the release.
Rating: really liked it
Love in English gives an authentic story to a 16-year-old girl named Ana, who has just moved from Argentina, finding herself in a foreign land of the US where everything is different from where she’s coming from. This book is a very simple story that comes with short chapters, straightforward and uncomplicated plot. But nevertheless, its core messages are so powerful. It works for any age group, a mix of educational reading and has a little bit of everything from the hilarious parts to the heartwarming one.
I like this book because it exudes a good and positive tone throughout the whole story. The main focus here is an eye-opener topic that I think is rarely discussed involving the major challenge that is often faced by immigrants - the language barrier. Even though I'm not an immigrant nor a foreigner, I’ve been through that (and still going through that phase most of the time), that’s why I could totally relate to Ana’s struggles.
Through Ana’s voice, she shares all the frustration that has held her back from conversations because of the lack of right words to explain it, sometimes making her the target of jokes, oftentimes being misunderstood which led her to feel isolated and find it difficult to make friends. Maybe for some people, English is a very simple language because they have been exposed to it from a young age, but try to see it through the eyes of people who come from places where English is not their first language and with what today’s culture that sees people who are fluent in English as a sign of intelligence as compared to who are not very fluent, it’s not surprising at all to why English can be very much intimidating especially for someone who doesn’t speak it.
I love all the characters in this book and their stories, especially the central character. Her character is so brave and I’m totally amazed seeing the sheer determination she put into improving her English and even feeling lost, she never gives up trying to give her very best in adapting to her new life. There’s a minor love triangle involved here but I am more invested in their friendship and together with other characters, they hold a very beautiful camaraderie.
All in all, a well-written story of an immigrant girl navigating a new journey in the US, trying to find herself in a sea of ‘foreign’ and start to create new memories in a place that now she calls ‘home’. I enjoy this book and happily recommend it to you!
Thank you Times Reads for sending me a review copy of this book in return for an honest review. This book is available in all good bookstores Malaysia and Singapore.
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Rating: really liked it
This was wonderful! Love In English follows Ana after moving to the US and realizing that her English classes back home really didn't prepare her for a world where everyone else speaks it natively. I loved the way language was used in storytelling and really loved watching the way Ana's understanding growing overtime was physically portrayed in the book. I speak about the same amount of Spanish as Ana probably spoke English at the beginning of this so I also really liked how Andreu uses a fully Spanish opener to disorient non-Spanish readers in the same way Ana is. A highlight for me was definitely the looks into Ana's poem (mostly relying on the messiness of human grammar for metaphor which was absolutely delightful to read).
I did find the ending of this a bit rushed. A lot comes to a head very quickly after a fairly slow building plot. Other than that, I loved this.
Rating: really liked it
"It will be a while, but I want to make up a new word, just for you and me, something that means: worth waiting for"
Rating: really liked it
16 year old Ana just immigrated to New Jersey from Argentina. She has been studying English back home to prepare for the move, but is feeling overwhelmed and underprepared for being fully immersed in the language and new surroundings.
We are taken through her days at home and at school as she adjusts to her new home and a new language. In addition she must also re-adjust to living with her father who has been in the US for a few years, leaving her life as a girl and re-entering as she becomes a woman. She also must adjust to a new version of her mother in this new place. We feel her struggle in classes at school as the teachers start off speaking mostly like Charlie Brown's teacher (wha-wha-wha) to her ears.
She starts her first day of school in math class which is a strong subject for her so she is confident. However, trouble arises when she misunderstands what the teacher is asking of her and ends up being laughed at by her peers.
Her next class is ESL for which she is excited as it means others who will also speak her language, or so she thinks. When she gets there she finds several different languages represented and no one else, even the teacher, speaks Spanish.
Through it all she starts to form friendships and crushes as she begins to find common ground with those around her.
She finds herself crushing on the All-American nice boy in math class, Harrison.
She is befriended by Altagracia who is fluent in Spanish and has roots in the DR. Through her we see one common struggle for many students with "different" backgrounds as Altagracia has to go by Gracie to those at school as her name is "too hard for them to pronounce".
She also makes a friend in the kind Greek speaking boy, Neo, from Cyprus in ESL. Together Ana and Neo navigate the waters of learning a new and complex language while learning how to belong to more than one place.
As a high school teacher I appreciated this book for putting into words the experience that my ELL students may go through. While every student and story is different this book really made you empathize with some of the situations the students may face. This book helped me to reflect on my own experiences with students and think about what I have done well and where I can improve.
Thank you to Libro.fm for an ALC of this book in exchange for an honest review. This books narration is wonderfully done by Frankie Corzo and I definitely recommend the audio version of this book for those who enjoy audiobooks.
Rating: really liked it
I'm very excited for this! A book that lets immigrant kids fall in love the way that other character gets to feels like what I have always wanted for myself and to read to my children. My bilingual brain ADORES that there will be excerpts in Spanish. I feel like this book mirrrors so much about the author's life that i'll get to know a sliver of her life with every chapter. Cannot wait.
