Review: What If It's Us, by Becky Albertalli & Adam Silvera

This book is so good the movie rights have already been acquired.

Fair warning, a lot of my thoughts on this book are just crying queerly. I have a lot of feelings about What If It’s Us, the gay meet-cute story we never knew we needed.

What If It’s Us begins outside a post office in New York, where Arthur - nervous, Jewish, intern at his mum’s law office - is on his way to pick up coffee for the real lawyers. Arthur, who I’m not sure if I was friends with in high school or if I was in high school, impulsively ducks into the post office when he encounters Ben.

Ben - awkward, Puerto Rican, in summer school because ADHD + hot boys = no studying - is trying to mail a box of things back to his ex so he can avoid ever having to deal with that whole mess, which is also intensely relatable.

They meet, they cute, but then they separate without learning each other’s names or phone numbers, and even though I knew from the blurb they would find each other I died inside. This turned out to be common throughout this book.

There are a lot of good morals about having healthy (and unhealthy) relationships here, woven in with the story of two strangers trying to get to know each other and themselves. There’s a lot of honest portrayal of how it feels to be LGBT(QIA) and trying to live your life, perpetually slightly worried that someone will somehow sense your queerness and attack you for it.

I have read literally all of Becky Albertalli’s books so it’s no surprise that I fell right into the writing style, which although I sometimes laugh at the sheer density of pop culture references, is as familiar as my tumblr dash. I have not read any of Adam Silvera’s books, but I think now I’m going to have to fix that.

Finally, and totally self-indulgently, I need you all to know that at one point in the book one of the side characters idly tells Arthur that she identifies with the SAME LABELS AS ME. THAT’S ME, YOU GUYS. I CRIED. I’M CRYING AGAIN NOW TELLING YOU. NEVER LET ANYONE TELL YOU REPRESENTATION ISN’T IMPORTANT.

Review: The Boneless Mercies, by April Genevieve Tucholke

Frey, Ovie, Juniper, and Runa are Boneless Mercies – death-traders, hired to kill quickly, quietly and mercifully. It is a job for women, and women only. Men will not do this sad, dark work.

There are so many women in this book. There are very few men in this book at all. It’s glorious. It’s been a week since I read it and I recall two. Two men whose importance to the story is almost entirely tied to their emotional significance to the protagonist. Is this what being a man feels like?

The Boneless Mercies is a heroic saga focusing on a band of young women who travel a vaguely medieval eastern european continent as mercy-killers for hire. On the off chance you aren’t already leaving to go pick up a copy, I will do my best to explain why you should.

First - this is not a kissing book. This is not a book ‘about women’ where there is as much or more time devoted to how she feels about some guy as there is to the actual plot. In fact, while Frey does eventually do some kissing, the book is more than half over by the time she even thinks about it. Instead, she thinks about her quest, and her companions, and how her quest might be affecting her companions. There is a lot of entirely platonic compassion and love and I dig it.

Second, the tone of this book is GLORIOUS. Reading it felt like floating, if that makes any sense. Picking up this book is like walking into an old growth forest, hearing the complete lack of machinery, knowing you are the only person for miles. It truly captures the poetry of traditional fairytales and epics. Like breathing night air. I loved it.

Third, and this is a little big repeating, but the women in this book! They are all different, they are all complex, they all have different stories and motivations and they’re all fleshed out and deep and have skills and flaws and gosh I just love them all so much. Juniper, in particular, is my favourite.

The Boneless Mercies is a standalone novel, and it suits it, it is one heroic tale from beginning to end, but it is the kind of standalone where I wish I had another twenty chapters to tell me about how they lived the rest of their lives in comfort and safety, so that I could know for sure that my girls were okay.


Read this book if you loved:

• Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo (or if you would have loved the Grisha trilogy, if not for that love triangle...)
• The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater
• Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor
• Women.

Thanks to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.