RaveThe Boston GlobeAnyone who’s ever been unceremoniously dumped—i.e. most of us—will feel for Maya, the narrator of Meredith Goldstein’s wise and surprisingly moving young-adult novel, Chemistry Lessons ... To its great credit, Chemistry Lessons goes all in on the science and—refreshingly—with characters who aren’t stereotypically geeky. And while women scientists are underrepresented in real-life labs, not to mention in YA novels, Goldstein gives Maya an impressive cadre of female PhDs in her extended family. Even better, Goldstein embraces the lingua franca of the lab, and the reader learns a thing or three about epigenetics along the way. Like all good rom-coms, Chemistry Lessons sometimes teeters on the edge of plausibility ... And yet the beating heart of Chemistry Lessons has little to do with experiments, geography, or boys—really, it’s a beautiful book about grief ... Goldstein explores how a smart, funny narrator moves forward after unimaginable loss. The prose helps, too; Maya’s voice is both specific and stripped-down, well suited to her scientific sensibility ... For STEM-lovers or just the lovelorn, this charming novel is all the boost required.
