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Katie Kennedy

Author of Learning to Swear in America

5 Works 339 Members 17 Reviews

Works by Katie Kennedy

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Common Knowledge

Gender
female
Nationality
USA

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This was the most adorable. Exactly what I needed in a cozy, lazy dark days of December. I'm not usually one for a rom-com, but throw in some astrophysics, an existential plot about fitting in and some high school bully revenge fantasy and now, you're speaking my language.

This reminded me in all the best ways of [a:Lydia Netzer|4886414|Lydia Netzer|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1384708162p2/4886414.jpg]'s book: a book about nerds told from the perspective of someone who clearly loves nerds, a dry sense of humor and a heavy hand of astronomy as both critical plot driver and also metaphor for trying to find one's place in the world.… (more)
 
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settingshadow | 9 other reviews | Aug 19, 2023 |
I like books about smart kids. The characters in this book were A , and somehow this author makes sciencey stuff interesting to me. BUT I definitely didn't like it as much as her debut novel. I wanted way more explanations (and not about the technical stuff-- about the PEOPLE) and maybe a tad less action.
 
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Michelle_PPDB | 4 other reviews | Mar 18, 2023 |
4.5 Stars. I'll pretty much never get sick of reading about 17 year-old geniuses, especially ones who try to save the world. The ending was a little MEH, but overall a fabulous debut!

Yuri is a 17-year-old physicist from Russia with the fate of the world in his hands. When an asteroid is found hurtling towards Earth weeks before impact, NASA is scrambling to come up with a save. Yuri has the knowledge, but not the clout or social skills to make people listen to him.

By chance, Yuri meets a "normal" teenage girl, and she teaches him that there is life outside the classroom and that if he saves the world, he'll at least have friends to celebrate with.


My Thoughts:
If you told me that I would read (and like) a book that was heavy on MATH, I would have never believed you. This thing is, it happened!! There's a lot of freaking math in this book. A lot of science and smart people stuff, and I genuinely loved those parts the best!! It's crazy how this story took hold of my attention.

Child-prodigy Yuri Strelnikov was painfully awkward and so, so, so freaking smart, but the awkward part (and some hard-core ageism by his colleagues) made people dismiss him... and that dismissal was really dangerous for Earth because UMMM??? Genius over here!!! I loved the tension of knowing the asteroid was speeding towards the place where the planning was taking place. If they didn't listen to Yuri, if they did and Yuri was wrong, If they failed in any way, they were at the point of impact!

Now, the Collums- Dovie was a fantastic addition to this book. She teaches Yuri things about the world that he never would have learned from his scientist circle. Also, Lennon, the brother, was a favorite for me. But as much as I loved the secondary story line of Yuri finding out how "normal" teens lived, I couldn't help but think "HELLO, THERE'S A FREAKING ASTEROID COMING AND YOU SHOULD BE THINKING ABOUT THAT RIGHT NOW!!!". It's insanely rude of me to want someone like Yuri to not live a life and just go and save the world, but I can't stop asteroids, so I need him to go and do that.... like NOW!! This is fiction though, so once I reminded myself of that, I was okay.

The ending kind of dragged, and really that's the only part that I didn't love. I didn't feel like I needed the events that happened after the asteroid problem played out. All that stuff probably could've been solved in 5-10 pages instead of multiple chapters.

Yuri is definitely a character I won't be forgetting anytime soon. I kept reading the book without the English articles (like the, a, an, etc.) even when they were clearly present or were in dialogue spoken by English speaking characters. I wonder how long I'll be doing that for?? While writing this, I've already been imagining these sentences without them :)

OVERALL: Such a smart, thrilling, silly, cool debut. I can't imagine telling anyone that I don't think they would like it. What's not to like about a fish-out-of-water NASA world-killing asteroid social/communication/culture barriers?

My Blog:


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Michelle_PPDB | 9 other reviews | Mar 18, 2023 |
Note: I received a digital review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.
 
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fernandie | 1 other review | Sep 15, 2022 |

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Works
5
Members
339
Popularity
#70,285
Rating
3.8
Reviews
17
ISBNs
15

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