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A review by ihateprozac
What If It's Us by Adam Silvera, Becky Albertalli
4.0
What If It’s Us is a YA contemporary romance for the ages……...or is it? Set in New York, two queer teen boys meet by chance in a post office and begin dating, but none of it is as easy as the rom coms make it seem.
Given that Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera are two of my favourite contemporary authors I had zero doubts that this would be amazing, but I still need to scream about how CUTE it was. I love a good romance where it doesn’t happen like in the movies, so this was totally up my alley!
Everything feels awkward and everything is hard work - just like any real relationship or friendship. The two boys constantly have to work at things and are constantly messing up, which was refreshing (and frustrating) to read in amongst the less realistic and more fluffy contemporaries of the genre.
I’m always intrigued about how co-written books work, and I have to say that while the storyline feels more Albertalli, the writing style feels more like Silvera. It’s got the cuteness and awkwardness of Albertalli romances, with the denser writing style of Silvera. While I did devour this in two sittings, it took more concentration and I didn’t breeze through it in 2.5 hours in the way I do with Albertalli novels.
And given that it’s Albertalli and Silvera, you know the diversity is going to be incredible.The story features a male/male romance between a Jewish teen and a white-passing Latinx teen, with a smattering of other minority groups represented on the sidelines. Shout out to Arthur’s queer femme colleague, and I also really enjoyed the discourse about being a white-passing Latinx person and the microaggressions that accompany this.
While I wanted a little more emotional devastation from the story, I still bawled my damn eyes out at the end. I so so so wanted our babies to skip off into the sunset together with. I read this on a sick day home from work and ended up bawling on my couch at 11am, and for the rest of the day I kept welling up as I recalled that one line that sent me over the edge:
YES HELLO I would like to address my cheque for personal therapy to Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera.
;_______________;
Given that Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera are two of my favourite contemporary authors I had zero doubts that this would be amazing, but I still need to scream about how CUTE it was. I love a good romance where it doesn’t happen like in the movies, so this was totally up my alley!
Everything feels awkward and everything is hard work - just like any real relationship or friendship. The two boys constantly have to work at things and are constantly messing up, which was refreshing (and frustrating) to read in amongst the less realistic and more fluffy contemporaries of the genre.
I’m always intrigued about how co-written books work, and I have to say that while the storyline feels more Albertalli, the writing style feels more like Silvera. It’s got the cuteness and awkwardness of Albertalli romances, with the denser writing style of Silvera. While I did devour this in two sittings, it took more concentration and I didn’t breeze through it in 2.5 hours in the way I do with Albertalli novels.
And given that it’s Albertalli and Silvera, you know the diversity is going to be incredible.The story features a male/male romance between a Jewish teen and a white-passing Latinx teen, with a smattering of other minority groups represented on the sidelines. Shout out to Arthur’s queer femme colleague, and I also really enjoyed the discourse about being a white-passing Latinx person and the microaggressions that accompany this.
While I wanted a little more emotional devastation from the story, I still bawled my damn eyes out at the end. I so so so wanted our babies to skip off into the sunset together with
Spoiler
nobody moving across the country but alas, it wasn’t meant to beSpoiler
”you can’t be someone I just knew for one summer. I have to know you every summer.”YES HELLO I would like to address my cheque for personal therapy to Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera.
;_______________;