Read What If It Us Becky Albertalli Adam Silvera Books

Product details Paperback 448 pages Publisher HarperTeen; Reprint edition (September 3, 2019) Language English ISBN-10 0062795236

What If It Us Becky Albertalli Adam Silvera Books Reviews

• i hated this book. i have no idea why people praise it so much. i decided to read it because i saw it ranked highly in entertainment magazine. i really tried to like it. i really did.
  
  the big problem i cant tell the two characters apart. the story is from the perspective of two boys who fall in love, but i could never know who is who. like “is this the kid with the ex boyfriend or the kid with the job internship or what?” i never knew. because of this, i never connected to either of the boys. if they died i literally wouldnt be sad. i felt no connection to them.
  
  also, arthur (one of the two main characters) is a toxic and jealous person. pretty much all the cheap drama in the story is about how he’s jealous of bens exboyfriend and he’s having himself little pity parties. and ben is always like “sorry” and theres no reason to be sorry hes just feeding arthurs toxic nature.
  
  also, the book is sporting so many pop culture references that it feels like theyre shoving it down our throats. maybe i’m just a little biased because i despise musicals and that is much of what ben and arthur obsess about, but they repeatedly mention multiple pop culture things and it gets insanely cringey.
  
  the book also moves too slow. it took 200 pages for ben and arthur to start dating. TWO HUNDRED!! THATS HALF THE BOOK!! also, the ending was dragged out and i kept expecting to turn the page and see the acknowledgements but it just kept going, just kept stabbing me again and again.
  
  i tried to enjoy this book. i really, really did. i read the whole thing despite being bored the whole time. i actually hoped someone would die so it would get interesting. i wish i had never decided to read it. a lot of people seem to enjoy it, so maybe you will too, but heed this warning. its a terrible book.
• “I don’t know if we’re a love story or a story about love.”
  
  Right up front this book brought tears to my eyes at the end. It channeled all the trauma of being a teenager, as well as the joy of coming out at last. The story of Ben and Arthur should be entirely different from my own story – they could practically be my grandchildren. But no, it resonated deeply in me, both as a gay man, and a father.
  
  I am intensely cynical when I approach young adult novels from mainstream publishers, particularly when they have gay content. Why? Not sure, but I think it’s because so many mainstream publishers ignore so much great LGBT content, I automatically wonder “why this book?” Is it because it’s safe, acceptable, within received norms as to how much gay is ok?
  
  Being a gay teenager in high school in the very early seventies was awful. Nobody was out. Everyone was afraid. My own experience was not technically that bad, but in retrospect, I was as confused and frightened and isolated as any closeted gay teen at the time. The closet was the default for all of us. Of course, I didn’t have books like this back then. I had The Boys in the Band.
  
  Albertalli and Silvera create a lovely rhythm with the structure of this book, alternating between the viewpoints of Puerto Rican Ben from Manhattan and Jewish Arthur from ex-urban Atlanta. These seventeen-year-olds are fully fleshed-out, richly dimensional. They observe the world around them closely, and they respond to it. Most importantly of all, they have parents they love (in that eye-rolling teenaged way) and friends who matter hugely in their lives. We see through these boys’ eyes, and we see a lot.
  
  The futility of high-school romances is sort of at the center of this book, but I think that’s a bit of a red herring. The interplay between Ben’s wounded cynicism and Arthur’s starry-eyed romanticism is critical to their relationship with each other, but it’s also essential in their relationship to their friends – Jessie and Ethan for Arthur, and the more complex quartet of Dylan, Harriet, Hudson and Samantha for Ben. All these young people need each other but are groping forward in their hormone-infused teen lives to figure out how the different kinds of love – love of family, love of friends, romantic love – are going to be part of them. It is confusing and aggravating and frightening. Which, as I remember if I think very hard on my own high-school years, is exactly right.
  
  I want to say that there’s no “happy ending” for this book, but in fact there is it’s just not the kind of happy ending we as a culture are primed to see in a romantic story. I will give no detail, but suffice it to say that as I ended this book, blinking away tears, I felt hopeful and comforted. Maturity is something I wasn’t looking for in these pages, and its discovery therein was an unexpected gift.
• I have a love/ hate relationship with Albertalli. I really liked Simon VS The Homo Sapiens Agenda and The Upside of Unrequited with their adorable characters and charming/ hilarious/ sometimes heartbreaking plots. I soared through these books and would recommend them to anyone- especially John Green fans. Then there was Leah On the Off Beat, which mostly angered me. I didn’t like her, or the way she acted toward her friends, how the love interest played itself out…. the book just pissed me off most of the time, with just barely enough good to keep me moving forward.
  
  What If It’s Us Brings out the best of this author- maybe due to the collab? The characters are purely magical even as they are each incredibly messy and neurotic in their own ways. I think it’s their imperfections that made them so fabulous. The premise was fantastic, the play between characters was perfect, and you saw a lot of character growth which is always a plus for me. My favorite character was definitely Dylan, the over the top best friend. I felt like he was the perfect foil for Ben. For me, this was the best book of the author’s to date. I loved it! My only objection, and it’s purely personal, I felt like the ending was too open. I want closure! And I want it to be EPIC. Still, five stars all the way.
  
  On the adult content scale, there’s some language, drinking, sexual innuendo and light sexual content. It’s not too crazy, and I would still give this one to a youngish teen. I give it a three.
• Buy it. The emotional roller coaster it takes you on is the best ive ever been blessed to read! After finishing all 433 pages in approximately 8 hours, i have to say it has easily replaced another book as my all time favorite.