WardenRed reviewed Here’s to Us by Becky Albertalli (What If It’s Us, #2)
None
4 stars
Sometimes happily ever afters aren’t about your happiness at all.
Wow. My mixed feelings are so mixed.
I'll start with the good stuff: I really enjoyed the writing. There were a lot of cool turns of phrase, a lot of small nods to the first book that helped me recreate it in my mind, and lots and lots of super amusing banter. I do admit it took me a few chapters to grasp the difference in the two MCs' voices and to start recognizing whose chapter I'm reading by more than just the heading. That lasted only for the first 7-10% of the book, though.
The story itself, on the other hand... Well, for starters, there hardly was an actual story. It was more like a bunch of events? The only narrative thread that held my attention and felt like it played out really well from start to finish was …
Sometimes happily ever afters aren’t about your happiness at all.
Wow. My mixed feelings are so mixed.
I'll start with the good stuff: I really enjoyed the writing. There were a lot of cool turns of phrase, a lot of small nods to the first book that helped me recreate it in my mind, and lots and lots of super amusing banter. I do admit it took me a few chapters to grasp the difference in the two MCs' voices and to start recognizing whose chapter I'm reading by more than just the heading. That lasted only for the first 7-10% of the book, though.
The story itself, on the other hand... Well, for starters, there hardly was an actual story. It was more like a bunch of events? The only narrative thread that held my attention and felt like it played out really well from start to finish was Dylan and Samantha's. And the main characters just... annoyed me so, so much. I've come to hate Arthur for how he treated Mickey. Ben was marginally better with Mario, I guess, but maybe that's only because the bar, thanks to Arthur, was so abysmally low. It's hard to root for characters who treat others this way. I kinda get being still hung up on an ex (believe me, I get it; when I was in my late teens, I would have easily won Olympic gold in long-distance obsessing if that was a sport). I don't get being dishonest and hurting other people over it, especially when it just takes a bit of thinking to figure out how much damage miscommunication can bring.
The funny thing is, I remember loving the first book up until the ending and then feeling really dissatisfied with it. I kind of got the point—not every big teenage romance works out, the experience is still important, life goes on. But I felt like the ending didn't fit that particular story, like these two messy boys were destined for a happy ever after. Later, I read another queer YA novel that had the main couple break up eventually, and that one didn't give me any of the same dissonanse. In case you're wondering what it was and don't mind this huge, huge spoiler, I'm talking about <spoiler>Like a Love Story by Abdi Nazemian.</spoiler>
So I should have enjoyed the story of Ben and Arthur getting back together, right? Yeah. I thought so, too. But the longer I read this book, the more the story felt unnecessary. Maybe the first ending was right all along. Maybe staying apart would have been the real happy ending. Because honestly, it's not just that these guys are awful to other people, it's that they're pretty damn bad for each other. Their interactions are an endless cycle of drama and miscommunication, and the sudden mood whiplash when they finally reunite and the last few chapters turn into a total fluff fest only serves to punctuate this. Also, they were initially together for a couple of weeks. Why should two weeks that happened when they were sixteen overshadow every experience they've accumulated since?
