Learning to Swear in America
By Katie Kennedy
Published on July 5, 2016 by Bloomsbury Publishing
It has 29 reviews with a 4.8 star average.
Here's the Amazon synopsis:
An asteroid is hurtling toward Earth. A big, bad one. Maybe not kill-all-the-dinosaurs bad, but at least kill-everyone-in-California-and-wipe-out-Japan-with-a-tsunami bad. Yuri, a physicist prodigy from Russia, has been recruited to aid NASA as they calculate a plan to avoid disaster.
The good news is Yuri knows how to stop the asteroid--his research in antimatter will probably win him a Nobel prize if there's ever another Nobel prize awarded. But the trouble is, even though NASA asked for his help, no one there will listen to him. He's seventeen, and they've been studying physics longer than he's been alive.
Then he meets (pretty, wild, unpredictable) Dovie, who lives like a normal teenager, oblivious to the impending doom. Being with her, on the adventures she plans when he's not at NASA, Yuri catches a glimpse of what it means to save the world and live a life worth saving.
Prepare to laugh, cry, cringe, and have your mind burst open with the questions of the universe.
The Amazon Preview has the first two chapters. Here's chapter #1. "No need to panic".
This is a great story told in third person from Yuri's point of view. He's a believable teenage boy. He worries about his sleeves getting too short and how to buy a shirt. He doesn't want to look out of place and is self conscious about his suitcase, and when he's thrown into a room with another younger boy, he plays together with him.
The conflicts are clear and understandable. Humanity is threatened by a devastating asteroid. This gives us all a reason to get behind our young hero and hope for his success. However, there are underlying conflicts which threaten Yuri's potential for success. Two of the most ubiquitous of large workplace conflicts...professional jealousy and distrust. Yuri is distrusted for both his age and his nationality.
Based on the first chapter, and I almost wasn't able to stop myself from jumping directly into the second, this looks to be a wonderfully, exciting book. And of the books I've read most recently, this is the one with the best movie potential (in my humble opinion).
Five stars. Try this one out.
