WHAT IF IT'S NOT

WHAT IF IT’S US

By Becky Alertalli and Adam Silvera

(Balzer + Bray and Harper Teen, 2018)

This could have been a blockbuster combination. Becky Albertalli is the author of Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda and Adam Silvera wrote More Happy than Not. Each book is a bestselling YA novel with a gay main character. In What If It’s Us the authors have gotten together to write about two main characters, Arthur Seuss and Ben Alejo, told in first-person, the chapters alternating between Arthur’s point of view and Ben’s. To be sure, the book is a bestseller. But is it all that it should be?

Arthur and Ben meet at the post office. There’s something special about the exchange but then it’s over. It’s one of those memorable first connections, the type of “I Saw You” that you read about in the personals. Was the chance-meeting simply a nice moment or is it fate? Will they meet again—SPOILER ALERT: Yes—and, if so, can they make something lasting develop from the promising, albeit brief, first interaction? The against-all-odds vibe is compounded by the fact that Ben lives in New York City and Arthur is only there for the summer with his Georgia family.

Arthur is an energetic, bright, in-your-face, Broadway musical loving gay teen while Ben is a more guarded, introspective, videogame playing and Sims-story-building character. Arthur has never had so much as a single date while Ben is only two weeks out of the crushing end to first love.

Arthur is too on-the-nose as a stereotypical gay character, a younger, smarter version of Jack McFarland of “Will & Grace”. Puppy-dog likable. He’s so obsessed with musicals that sometimes Will he see ‘Hamilton’ while in New York? feels like the central question to the story. By contrast, Ben is hesitant, introspective and one more inclined to mess things up.

The story has a typical romance arc—will they get together, will they get back together after the inevitable (and, here, predictable) relationship challenge, will they live happily ever after?

I didn’t love the story, but then I didn’t hate it either. It’s a perfectly fine confection, a light, easy read that floats along, capturing the essence of giddy, butterfly-flapping young love. Both characters are fully out as gay. By golly, even the parents are one hundred percent supportive, with an Alejo-Seuss family dinner happening as the third or fourth date.

If I had read this as a teen, I’d have considered the story pure fantasy yet I’d have adored it and reread immediately after getting to the last page. Maybe I’m too jaded now to digest the plot. Maybe it wasn’t fair to read this concurrently with an adult novel about a mass murder, thus making the lightness glaring juxtaposed against the other book’s darkness (and more sharply defined characters). Maybe I had too high expectations, especially after reading Silvera’s darker More Happy than Not. While I didn’t fully love More Happy, Silvera established himself as a promising author with a distinct voice. What If It’s Us feels more commercial and a squandered opportunity to further develop what I thought was Silvera’s unique talent. It didn’t help that there’s an unnecessary epilogue, a literary structure that typically rattles me. Epilogues always make me wonder if authors doubt the reader’s ability to wonder into the great beyond.

I could have done without the entire bubbly storyline of Arthur. Everything about him feels too cute. A better story could have focused solely on Ben and his world as he attends summer school and wonders whether any part of his relationship with his ex, Hudson, can be salvaged. Is let’s be friends realistic, particularly with a first love? A closer, deeper look at Ben’s world could have brought out more in supporting characters Harriet and Samantha as well as more development of Ben’s Puerto Rican identity. My hunch is that this is where Silvera’s writing would have wowed the reader. Alas, it seems I’d hoped for a different novel.