What If It's Us Books in Order

The What If It's Us series is a two book, queer young adult rom com that follows Arthur Seuss and Ben Alejo as their almost magical New York meet cute collides with the messier parts of real life. Co written by Adam Silvera and Becky Albertalli, it balances fizzy moments with honest conversations about race, class, family, and what it means to grow up.

In What If It's Us, Arthur is in the city for a summer internship at his mother's law firm when he notices a cute boy mailing a breakup box at the post office. They have a brief, charged conversation before a flash mob and normal chaos knock them apart. Arthur, a Broadway loving visitor from Georgia, decides the universe clearly wants them together and launches a slightly over the top search using coffee shop clues and handmade flyers. Ben, a local Puerto Rican teen stuck in summer school after a rough year, is torn between cynicism and the hope that maybe the universe is trying to help him out after all.

Once the boys find each other again, the first book settles into a pattern of trial and error dates, complicated friend dynamics, and big questions about what to do when summer ends. Arthur's best friends back home feel shut out, Ben's ex hovers in the background, and both of them have to decide whether the story they imagined for themselves matches who they are becoming. The tone stays light and funny, but the book does not pretend that a perfect rom com montage can fix every problem.

Here's to Us jumps forward a couple of years. Arthur returns to New York for a dream Broadway internship with a boyfriend waiting back in Boston, while Ben has survived his first year of college, is still living at home, and is collaborating on a fantasy book with his charming classmate Mario. Their friend groups overlap again, chance encounters start stacking up around the city, and both boys realise that old feelings never fully vanished, even as they try to honor their current relationships.

The sequel leans more into questions about timing, careers, and what it means to choose a person when you also have to choose a path for yourself. Fans still get the inside jokes, group texts, and chaotic friend energy of the first book, but with an added layer of nostalgia and hard earned maturity. Without spoiling anything, the series leaves Arthur and Ben in a place that feels hopeful about love while honest about how much work it takes.

For the best experience, read the books in order, starting with What If It's Us and then moving on to Here's to Us to see how their story changes as they grow up. Together, they form a complete arc from chance meeting to thoughtful, if sometimes messy, second chance.