What If It's Us

More like a 3.5....

This book has been on every anticipated list since the day it was announced. Though I've never actually read any Adam Silvera book and only the Simonverse books by Becky, even I was all ready to read this cute fluffy contemporary, but I had to wait all these days due to the long waitlist at my library. And now I'm not exactly sure how I feel about it.

This is definitely a very cute story for the most part. The way Arthur and Ben meet for the first time gives us all the feels of an adorable meet cute and increases our anticipation about how they would meet again. Even though the way Art tries to find Ben again might feel a bit stalkerish, I think it's par for course in this social media age. How they find each other again is a cute story in itself and I was very excited for their love story to begin.

Arthur is sixteen year old Jewish boy with ADHD who is spending his summer interning in New York. I totally adored his character. He is fascinated by all things NY and plays the perfect tourist. He is also a complete over the top romantic and I heartfully felt for him, because I definitely had that side to myself at that age. He goes full throttle for whatever he wants, has no filter when he wants to say something and I thought that was quite realistic for an excited teenager.

On the other hand, Ben is quite cynical even for his age. He is Peurto Rican who is proud of his heritage but feels that's not enough because of his being quite white passing. Also, due to his recent breakup, he also feels like he is not worthy and isn't sure why anyone would want to be boyfriends with him. This feeling is also exacerbated because of him being in summer school and struggling with his studies.

Their relationship is instalove but I felt it. It's OTT and adorable and what I really expected from young love. I felt all the excitement that Arthur felt for all his firsts and it was nice to see Ben want to give him all that. They also have quite a few disagreements, but the resolutions also happen fast and it was good to see not a lot of angst. Both of them also have a great group of friends, but my favorites were Ben's BFF Dylan and his new girlfriend Samantha. They are so funny and bring a lot of laughs to the proceedings, and the slightly broody Ben definitely needs them.

What I didn't really enjoy was the repetitiveness of the story. Ben and Arthur want everything to be perfect, so there are a lot of do-overs that happen. Even though I thought their dates were sweet, it was sometimes the same thing all over again. The story felt slightly dragged on towards the end, though I can't pinpoint exactly why. I also happen to fall in the camp of those readers who didn't like the epilogue, but I did see that coming. There are also a lot of pop culture references and while I really enjoyed everything about the HP fandom, I know nothing about Broadway and all the puns about Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen went totally above my head. I don't think it took away from my enjoyment of the story itself, but if I knew about them better, maybe the impact on me would have been different.

I got all the fluffiness and cute characters that I would expect from Becky but I think I may not be cut out for reading Silvera's work. This is a YA contemporary and more often than not, I'm here for a happy story. But, despite Arthur believing throughout the book that the universe brought them together and telling us readers the same over and over, the way it ended made me feel cheated of that experience. Maybe it's realistic and maybe I'm being unreasonable, but I cried because of that ending and not the good kind of tears. However, I think this is still a well written teenage love story with some amazing moments and all of you should definitely give it a chance. Maybe it will surprise you.

3.5 ??????

It was a bit too meandering for me, and I didn???t like all the cultural references (especially regarding real people). There were some cute moments but I think the first few chapters were the best. I lost interest during the last chapters. Most other books would have ended it sooner.

The audiobook narration was excellent though, so if you have the option, I???d recommend that as the best way to read.

3.5 Stars

Initial Thoughts: I was really enjoying this book until I got to the end. It fell completely flat for me and seemed out of character for everyone. I expected so much more than what I was left with.

One other comment, the pop culture references were often super on point and entertaining, but I also feel like they were forced and excessive throughout the entire book. Especially if you are not a huge Harry Potter fan, which I luckily am, but I feel that others would not get half the references and also dislike how many there are.

Lately, when I read something I end up hating, I wonder if the problem is me and not the book. However, the problem was definitely the book this time.

All these four and five star ratings people are throwing at it? I don't understand. Did we read the same book?

I would talk about a plot, but there really wasn't a strong one.

I'd talk about the characters, but none of them were interesting enough to discuss.

And I'd talk about the chemistry, but the only chemistry in this book was the test that Ben probably should have failed. Wait did he fail? I honestly don't remember.

About half this book was Hamilton references that could have been cut out completely. I love Hamilton just as much as the next guy, but Arthur has made me not want to listen to the soundtrack anytime soon. Plus mix in references to other musicals and Harry Potter on every other page. It was one, giant 400 page billboard. Especially to the company Lyft, which was mentioned no less than
5 times.

Also, Ben's fantasy fanfiction of his life has obliterated all excitement I had for Adam Silvera's upcoming fantasy book. It was literally the least interesting book-inside-a-book ever.

Also, speaking of fanfictions. This entire book felt like one. And not in a good way. I have all the respect for fanfictions, but fanfictiony writing is not for me.

I think I'm just gonna avoid every Becky Albertalli book from now on. I don't have one nice thing to say about any of her last three books. But Adam, darling, I know you can do better.

I was looking for a similar quick queer romance after reading "Red, White, & Royal Blue" and I guess this sort of gave me that? But it was much more YA than anticipated, so the characters read extremely juvenile and underdeveloped. I almost canned it several times because of the inner monologues of the characters that just sound like 16-year-olds, because they ARE. But I pushed forward because it was so short. I think if I were twenty years younger, I'd like it, but it was just too immature for me, in the end.

Un peu inégal, les évènements s'enchaînent un peu sans trop de vraisemblance, on aurait envie de donner sa chance à l'histoire mais quelque chose dans la façon d'écrire et dans le manque de crédibilité de ces enchaînements empêche de s'attacher aux protagonistes. La fin arrive tiède, et tombe à plat. Dommage.

LOVED the beginning, lost all interest after the breakup. It was too long, the characters became annoying. I had to push myself to keep reading after taking some distance. I liked the way it ended and how the characters developed, even though it took a bit too long in my opinion.I love the work of Albertalli and Silvera SO much and I built this book up in my head too much. 3,75*

3½ stars, rounded up to 4.

For the most of the book I really loved it, it was between 4.5-5 stars. The reasons I end on 3½ are that, to me, some of the drama felt too forced, and some of their getting back seemed to easy. Also, the ending. It wasn't a bad ending, but it wasn't an ending anyone hoped for.

On the plus side, it was laugh-out-loud funny and it was deeply moving, and Arthur and Ben (and their friends) are all really sweet.
And it really shows how difficult it can be to be together, even if you both want it, because we all carry insecurities and things from our past that hold us back, no matter what age we have.

Not 100% satisfied, but I will definitely recommend it.

I know I'm being a little tough on this book. It's not a bad book, it's fine; pleasant to read, and fairly well plotted. But I'm going to use this book to open a question that I have been thinking about when I read gay YA romances: what is their purpose?

OK, that's a little disingenuous. There's a part of their purpose that I know extremely well, and I know it because of it's absence during my childhood and adolescence. Sometimes my head swims when I think about what that time would have been like if there were stories like this available to me in libraries, and not just the one scary “issue” book about being young and gay. Instead, I had to gather bits and pieces of interior experiences from other kinds of stories, like a crow gathering bits of tinsel and shattered glass. Family alienation and distrust from Sharon Creech's The Wanderer and Edward Bloor's Crusader. How to let crushes smoulder from Katherine Paterson's Jacob Have I Loved and Carol Fenner's Yolanda's Genius. And for how to get close to others when what is inside you is so big and what we show to each other can be so small, I loved E.L. Konigsburg's The View From Saturday.

Here I am, getting lost in memories of my own identity formation.

S0 let's get to my real question: are LGBT YA romances just low-fat, low-cal romances, with younger protagonists and a less steamy helping of sex? Or is there still some part of YA literature that is didactic, helping young people with these kind of stories in their own life to navigate their way through?

I don't miss the didactic-only era of children's literature, which seemed to go away in the 70's and 80's in favor of a more interior-experience focused way of telling stories (except for maybe utility picture books and books for therapists and religious books). Those weren't very fun, and once the cultural morés that produced them went away, there was not very much charm in them either.

But I'm also left a little unsatisfied by What If It's Us. There's so much going on! One narrator's parents are in a strained marriage, is away from his friends. The other is struggling with school. They are both navigating having sex for the first time. One of them is obsessed with Broadway musicals, particularly Hamilton. And yet we don't really get to see how all of these factors affect them on the inside. How does one boy's parent's fighting affect how comfortable he is experimenting sexually? We don't know, because these parts of the story are siloed off from each other. Why does he like Hamilton? We don't know, and so although we know a lot about his preferences, we don't get the chance to have those preferences illuminate what is inside him.

Maybe the representation is enough. It certainly would have meant a lot to me. But I can't help but thinking that when stories are told all on the outside and we don't see enough of the inside, our noses pressed up to the glass of a room we can't enter, we might end up thinking that the only thing that matters is outside too.

Three stars is me being generous because of my love for Becky Albertalli and several of the side characters in this book. Plus a good amount of diversity! And musical references! And...that's really all the positive things I have to say. I'm probably going to take away another half star.

To be honest, I expected WAY better from this matchup. It dragged something awful, and I'm sorry but Ben and Arthur had the chemistry of like...two blades of grass. Plus the whole book was this really weird tug-of-war between realistic, down-to-earth elements and being so cliched and predictable that I physically cringed. (And no, that was not a shot at either of the authors because they both did both at different times.)

To be honest, the time I was most into this book was the 20 minutes in the middle when I thought this was all a big Gotcha and they were both going to have different love interests.

Plus there was one point when something happened and Ben worried Arthur was going to break up with him, and let me just say, if I was in Arthur's shoes? I couldn't have dumped him because by the time it would have occurred to me as an option, I would have already murdered him, brought him back to life, and murdered him again. :)

Yeah, I'm taking away that half star now.

*2.5

I just adored this book. Though it is certainly YA and at times I was cringing at the more juvenile material, most of the time I was smiling ear to ear. It usually takes me months to find the time to read a full book but I devoured this within a week. The characters are so lovable and you find yourself rooting for them the entire way through. This book taught me a lot too. I'm excited to read the sequel.

Really, really, REALLY cute book. It's such a nice feeling to read a book that is genuinely relatable and representative. I smiled, I laughed, I had fun reading this. Obviously, it's YA so they deal with very YA issues, but in the grand scheme these are things humans deal with throughout their life. My biggest issue is that sometimes the two main characters would blend and have the same thought process and literary voice that I'd forget who's perspective a section was supposed to be.