Here's to Us is like What If It's Us except Arthur is less hateable, the tone is less outrageous, and there are fewer Harry Potter references. That doesn't make it better than the first book.

WIIU had a very distinct tone of melodrama and inventive plotlines, albeit those plotlines being 'Arthur stalks the love interest and this is cute somehow.' HTU, in comparison, is boring and cliche.

A burgeoning writer trying to leave NYC but staying because of True Love, an arbitrary love triangle, pre-existing boyfriends who exist only to be broken up with for the sake of these Soulmates...

and no, these tired plot beats aren't even written interestingly.

Furthermore, the ending of this book flies directly in the face of the ending of WIIU.

At the end of WIIU, the prognosis is reached that Ben and Arthur love each other, but are content with a platonic relationship, something refreshingly unromantic. At the end of HTU, the prognosis is reached that Arthur and Ben aren't happy as friends actually and in fact they both need to break up with their boyfriends immediately so that they can get married.

An unnecessary epilogue ends a story overly concerned with making sure that Ben and Arthur have to end the story in a monogamous romantic relationship

even if they have to break up their perfectly happy (if not Madly In Love) relationships to do so.

However, despite all of this, the undoubtedly worst (and consequently funniest) part of this book is Dylan. He graduated from 'occasional sex jokes' to 'sexually harasses every man he meets', to the point where it feels like Samantha is bearding for a man with no concept of boundaries.

His relationship with her ends with them having a SHOTGUN WEDDING at 18 years old, something which is unambiguously treated as cute?

Additionally, Samantha gets less lines than she did even in the first book, which STILL leaves her in the position of 'most prominent female character.'

There are other big oddities as well. There is no indication that covid-19 exists in this story, yet Zoom is mentioned, something intrinsically linked to the pandemic. The typical performative descriptions plague the book, from the singular mention of queer women existing to Arthur seeing a black person with a trans rights shirt and immediately assuming their gender.

There is still the issue of Dylan's SHOTGUN WEDDING, which the narrative refuses to address. They are 18 year old college students with no wealthy family or jobs to speak of, and frankly, I would love to see Dylan do the budgeting on that one.

 

I did not go into this book thinking that I would like it. I disliked the first book just the same. However, the first book was very fun to hate-read. This one was just boring.