What If It's Us

I picked this one up because I had read Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda a while back and I was curious what Becky Albertalli would do with a co-writer. Adam Silvera was already known for They Both Die at the End, which is a lot heavier than this. The two of them together sounded like it could either click or clash. It mostly clicks. The book came out in 2018 from HarperTeen, and it reads exactly like a summer in New York when you are sixteen and everything feels possible for about three weeks.

Arthur Seuss is sixteen and spending the summer in the city as an intern at his mom's law firm. He is from Georgia, he is Jewish, he loves Broadway musicals a little too much, and he still believes the universe owes him a meet cute. Ben Alejo is Puerto Rican, lives in the city, writes fantasy on the side, and is stuck in summer school so he does not get held back. He just mailed a breakup box to his ex, Hudson, and he is not really looking for anything new.

They run into each other at a post office. Arthur is there on a coffee run, sees Ben in a Dream N Bean shirt, follows him in, overhears the breakup box conversation, and then loses him in the crowd. That is the whole engine for the first third. Arthur puts up a Missed Connection style poster at the coffee shop. Ben sees his own face on it when he stops for coffee with Dylan. He emails Arthur. They start texting, then meeting up, then trying to figure out if this is actually something.

The post office boy and the poster

What I liked about the opening is how awkward it stays. Arthur is not smooth. He rehearses what he will say and then says the wrong thing. Ben is prickly in a way that felt true to me. He has been burned by Hudson, who is also in his summer school class, so every time Arthur gets excited about fate, Ben pulls back a little.

Dylan Boggs is Ben's best friend, funny and loyal and a little all over the place when he likes someone. Samantha O'Malley is the barista Dylan likes, and she gets pulled into the search. On Arthur's side there is Jessie and Ethan back home, plus Juliet and Namrata at the firm. The friend groups matter because a lot of the dates are group dates or interrupted dates. Nothing happens in a clean bubble.

The poster bit could have felt cute in a forced way, but the alternating chapters help. Arthur chapters were written by Albertalli, Ben chapters by Silvera, and you can feel the different rhythms. Arthur spirals in long hopeful paragraphs. Ben is shorter, more guarded, funnier in a dry way. When they finally reconnect over email, the relief is real because you have watched both of them check their phones too often.

Dating while the city keeps interrupting

Once they start dating, New York keeps getting in the way. Subway delays, summer school schedules, parents with opinions, friends who need attention. One date ends well, the next one stalls because Arthur finds out Ben still has the breakup box and wonders what that means.

I thought this middle part was the strongest writing. The authors do not let either boy be the perfect boyfriend. Arthur pushes for big romantic gestures and labels too fast. He wants to say this is it after two good days. Ben holds back information because he is afraid of looking needy, especially around Hudson. They misread each other in ways that reminded me of being a teenager, where a delayed text feels like a verdict.

There is a scene where they almost have sex and stop because Arthur is not ready. I appreciated that it was not played for drama or as a joke. It is just stated, Ben is kind about it, they move on, and it comes up later without shame. For a young adult romance from 2018, that felt refreshing.

Hamilton comes up a lot because Arthur is obsessed. Ben writes a fantasy novel and eventually shares new chapters with Arthur as a birthday gift, writing Arthur into the plot. Those small creative exchanges tell you more about them than the kissing scenes do. Arthur shows love by planning, Ben shows it by writing.

Hudson, Jessie, Ethan, and the rest of the mess

No romance survives without exes and best friends making things complicated, and this book leans into that.

Hudson is in Ben's summer class, which is brutal. You cannot get over someone when you have to sit near them and do algebra. Ben tries to act fine and does not quite manage it. Arthur tries to act unbothered and does not manage that either. When Arthur surprises Ben after class and sees Hudson there, he breaks up with Ben on the spot. It is impulsive and a little unfair, and the book does not pretend otherwise.

At almost the same time, Jessie and Ethan tell Arthur they have been dating for months and were scared to tell him after he came out. Arthur feels blindsided. He suddenly has no boyfriend and two best friends who kept a secret. I liked that the book lets Arthur be upset about both things at once without making him the villain. He is sixteen, far from home, working a grown up internship, and his support system wobbles.

Dylan is the steady one here in a surprising way. He is goofy, but when he ends up in the hospital later in the summer, it snaps Ben and Arthur out of their pride. Ben texts Arthur because he is scared. Arthur shows up. It is simple and it works.

The hospital night and the birthday

The hospital stretch is short but it changes the tone. Up to then a lot of the conflict is about insecurity and timing. After Dylan's scare, the boys are gentler with each other. They stop keeping score.

Arthur's impromptu late night birthday party is one of my favorite sequences. It is crowded, a little chaotic, friends overlapping, inside jokes flying. Arthur and Ben have sex for the first time afterward, and again the book handles it plainly. No grand speech, no trauma, just two people who have talked enough to feel safe.

Ben sending Arthur the new chapters afterward is the real love confession. He has let Arthur into the fantasy world he usually keeps private. If you write, you know how big that is. Arthur gets it. He does not critique it like an editor. He receives it like a gift.

I will say the pacing sags a tiny bit right before this. There are two or three dates in a row that follow the same pattern: good start, small misunderstanding, retreat, text apology. I started skimming one coffee shop scene because I could guess how it would end. It picks back up once the Jessie and Ethan reveal lands.

Saying goodbye at the end of August

Arthur has to go back to Georgia when summer ends. This is where the book earns its reputation, I think. A lot of teen romances would force a promise to make long distance work or stage a dramatic airport chase. These two talk it through and decide not to force it.

They part as friends, or something more complicated than friends, with a tearful goodbye that does not pretend they know what will happen. Arthur gets on the bus or plane back to his life. Ben stays in New York with school and writing and Dylan. There is sadness, but also a sense that they did this right for who they are right now.

I liked that choice even though part of me wanted the big romantic ending. It fits what the book has been saying about the universe. Arthur starts out believing in fate as a straight line. Ben starts out not believing in it at all. By the end they meet somewhere in the middle. Sometimes you meet the right person at the wrong time, and caring about them means not squeezing too hard.

The sequel, Here's to Us, revisits them years later, which tells you the authors knew readers would want more. But this first book stands alone fine. You do not need a promise of forever for the summer to have mattered.

What works and what drags

The voices are the best part. You can tell who is narrating without chapter headings after a while. Arthur's hope is specific, all Broadway lyrics and law firm anecdotes and texts to his mom. Ben's humor is drier, more self protective, and his chapters about writing felt lived in. I found myself reading Arthur faster, with a kind of fondness, and slowing down for Ben because his sentences carry more weight than they first suggest.

One small thread I kept thinking about is how class shows up without becoming the whole point. Arthur is interning through a family connection, staying somewhere stable, with parents who check in and can afford to let him spend a summer exploring. Ben is trying not to repeat a grade, working around summer school hours, living with the kind of pressure where one more slip costs real money and time. The book does not lecture about this. It just lets Arthur suggest a plan that costs forty dollars and lets Ben do the math in his head. Those moments rang true.

Religion and family culture also sit quietly in the background. Arthur is Jewish and it comes up in ordinary ways, jokes with his mom, food, things he misses from home. Ben is Puerto Rican and his identity shapes how he moves through school and how people read him, though the book keeps the focus on his writing and his friendships rather than turning him into a representative. I liked that both boys get to be specific without the story stopping to explain them.

New York feels real without turning into a travel guide. Post office lines, coffee shops, cramped apartments, summer school classrooms with bad air conditioning, late trains. The city is hot and crowded and expensive, and that pressure shapes how often they can see each other. A date that should be simple becomes complicated because someone has to get to class or cover a shift or catch the last train that actually runs on time.

If I have a complaint, it is that some side characters stay thin. Samantha is mostly Dylan's crush for a long stretch before she gets her own edges. Hudson is mostly a problem to react to rather than a full person, though I suppose that is how exes feel when you are sixteen. Harriet, Ben's former friend, is mentioned more than seen. Jessie and Ethan get more depth near the end, but for half the book they are voices on the phone.

Also, the alternating author setup sometimes shows. A few transitions repeat information you just learned in the other point of view. You get Arthur's version of a date, then Ben's version starts by covering the same ten minutes. It is not bad, just a little careful, like each writer wanted to make sure you did not miss their character's feelings. I noticed it most around the second breakup, where both chapters circle the same hallway conversation.

Still, I finished it in two sittings and I did not want to rush the last forty pages. That is rare for me with romance. I cared whether they would be kind to each other at the goodbye, more than whether they would stay together. That feels like the right thing to care about.

For who this is for: if you like Simon vs. or They Both Die at the End but want something lighter than the second and messier than the first, this sits right between them. It is romantic without being naive about timing, funny without turning the boys into jokes, and honest about how hard it is to be generous when you are scared of being left.