If We Were Us: A Queer Plotline For Straight People

 

At first, this book really had me going. I mean that in the sense of my copy of If We Were Us (released 2020) by K.L. Walther is a hardback, and hardbacks tend to have their blurbs in the dust covers. Mine has a bit of writing on the back, that I, at first, thought was the blurb, but was more of just one of those little paragraphs that’s meant to pitch the book. Also, I’m accidentally two books in a row at boarding schools.

But the blurb tells us that everyone at the prestigious Bexley School believes that Sage Morgan and Charlie Carmichael are meant to be. Even though Charlie seems to have a new girlfriend every month, and Sage has never had a real relationship. Their friends seem to think it’s a matter of time until they end up together. However, when Luke Morrissey shows up on campus, things get shook up. He and Charlie are immediately drawn to each other, so Sage is then like, “Lol, I can spend time with Charlie’s twin brother, Nick.” Charlie is afraid of what others will think if he accepts there’s more than friendship with Luke, and Sage worries that if she rushes things, then she and Nick won’t last out of high school. So, even though there’s a lot there, it’s giving very much a story of friendship and identity.

In the first chapter, Sage’s POV, we find out that she’s gone to Bexley because, since she’s besties with Charlie, if he was going, then she was going. Then as she’s moving, Luke Morrissey, from the blurb, gets brought up, and Sage swears the name is familiar, and it turns out that he babysat Charlie and Nick when they were younger.

I will say, there was immediately a lot going on in the first chapter. Sort of like this bucket of content got dumped into my lap, and I was the one who had to figure out what was going on with it. I’m all for the openings of books being snappy, but I do wish this one would have taken a moment to let me settle into the world, and what was going on a little bit more. Bexley is this school that’s the school, apparently, so I wanted to be shown around a little bit, not thrown into a group of characters, which was what happened.

Anyway, chapter two switches to Charlie’s POV. And I’ll say, it was better than chapter one. Like, this one slowed down a bit. We got a bit of the school, and a bit of Charlie as well, about his family history and connection to the school, about how most, if not all, his family studied at Bexley. And then when he starts interacting with Luke, he clearly is into him, whether he even realises it himself. He also looks at Luke’s feet a lot… Don’t know if that was the author trying to tell us something…

Then three goes back to Sage and she takes Luke to this Bexley party, they do some stuff – that sounds worse than it is. They flood the lights on a sports field and expose a bunch of people hooking up, one of Sage’s friends makes very obvious moves on Luke, but he just ignores them, then Sage goes off to meet with Nick, and we find out the two of them have kissed previously, then chapter three ends with them kissing again.

So, we’ve got some lovely set-up, sort of. There’s the set-up of Sage kissing Nick and wanting to keep it a secret, and the suggestion that Charlie might feel something for Luke, but that’s about it. The blurb did give me a very coming-of-age feel, and these first three chapters gave me that as well. My biggest issue from the opening is that too much was handed to me at once. This goes for both characters and locations. Loads of them get mentioned, but barely any are expanded on, so I didn’t have a mental image for any of them.

And I felt like that was a problem that persisted throughout the book. So, the book is dual-POV, obviously, but it tells two stories at the same time. Granted, the stories were intertwined, but what I felt like the biggest shortcoming of this book was that because it was telling two stories at once, that meant that they were fighting with each other for the spotlight the whole time. And this fighting led to neither of them really flourishing, and honestly, flopping off a one-metre-high stage and dying – very much Shana in Pretty Little Liars. I think this could have been improved had the book only focused on one of the stories, and had the other be a sub-plot.

I’d have personally had Charlie’s story of coming to terms with his sexuality be the main one over Sage’s plot of wanting to date Charlie’s twin. Part of this might be down to me being gay, but it also is very much, Charlie’s plot is an actual problem, like potential getting disowned problem, and Sage’s plot is a Kim Kardashian losing her earring in the ocean kind of problem.

To list something positive. I liked the first 40% of Charlie’s story. It’s very much the case of he’s a different, softer, person around Luke, and the two of them definitely had some cute interactions. But I think it was around the page 150 point, where the conflict started getting real for the characters, was where I started to stop enjoying the book.

These next few points, they were originally written as rough notes, so I hope they make sense.

I saw a TikTok recently that said something along the lines of, “You can tell when a queer book was written with straight people in mind”. Charlie’s story fully read like that. A lot of Charlie’s plot was similar to what you often see in queer coming-of-age books – struggling with anxiety and who the character is as a person – that in itself was fine. The problem I had was that none, and I mean none, of it felt original. To me, the majority of the queer aspects of this book felt very surface level and like the author thought, “Oh, yes, queer books have this, I should include it” and just wrote those first thoughts down without exploring them.

You know that saying of how you don’t need to reinvent the wheel? This book feels like, instead of seeing other people’s wheels and taking inspiration from them to make its own wheel, this book saw other people’s versions of the wheel in a showcase, chipped little bits off of them, and glued those chips together, until they formed a vague wheel shape. It’s also like that one Jasmine Masters video, the, “Same old shit, nothing new”, one.

Now, here are a few moments that really cemented that this was a book for straight people, whether intentionally or unintentionally:

There was a moment, on page 331, where I had to witness the line, “You can always count on Ed Sheeran to set the mood.” That can fuck right off. Tell me what queer person holds Ed Sheeran in that high a regard?

Country music gets brought up. But the artists that are mentioned are Blake Shelton, Miranda Lambert, Dierks Bentley and Taylor Swift. Now, I have no issue with Miranda or Taylor. But these four are all massive country stars, and if this was a book for queer people, the author would have dug a little deeper for country singers that queer people resonate with more, surely. This book came out in 2020, so Kacey Musgraves, she’d be there. Orville Peck, he might be there. Hell, Garth Brooks would have worked. Sure, he’s super het, but he’s been extremely vocal about his support for the queer community.

There’s a point where Charlie and Luke have a full-on Harry Potter conversation and about what houses they’re in…

Oh, on page 128, Nick, Charlie’s straight twin brother, says, “I know it sounds gay. Like, really gay”, in reference to something he does. And this really disappointed me to read. This book was released in 2020, why would the author use that phrase, using “gay” to describe something as negative? If it came out that Nick was a homophobe, then I would have let it slide as a character choice, but he’s not, so it was just a shit choice the author made. If I’m being honest, how can you even write a queer story and use a line like that without it being a character choice?

Anyway, both stories end happily… Cool, I guess. But to go back to my very first point of, because both stories fought for the spotlight, none of them ended up getting it. Because neither story got the spotlight it needed, I just ended up not caring what happened to any of the characters.

For example, something that was meant to be a big plot point for Charlie was the fact he was scared of coming out – that’s fair and it makes sense for his character. The issue was that because his story didn’t get the space it needed, he basically has one conversation, and his entire mindset changes, and all that fear he has of coming out just goes away. And I just don’t think that was realistic for his character. I agree that one conversation can get you to change your mindset so that you can begin to change, absolutely, but Charlie spent a good chunk of the book just petrified of what people would think of him, so I don’t think his entire person shifting after one conversation made sense for him.

So, yeah… This book wasn’t good, and I didn’t enjoy it.

Okay, bye!