I was up way too late finishing a logo redesign for a bakery client — the kind of fiddly kerning work that makes your eyes cross — and I needed something sweet in my ears to balance out the frustration. So I queued up Hvis det er os, the Danish audiobook of Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera's What If It's Us, figuring a queer YA romance set in New York summer would be the exact energy I needed. Frida was asleep on my lap. Diego was judging me from the bookshelf. And for a while, the vibes were good.
But here's the thing. By the time I hit hour five, I wasn't feeling the butterflies anymore. I was feeling... restless.
The Post Office Meet-Cute Deserved Better
The premise is genuinely adorable. Ben's returning a box of his ex's stuff at a New York post office, Arthur's there for his summer internship adventures, and the universe does its thing. That setup? Chef's kiss energy. The dual narration from Johannes Nymark and Emil Birk Hartmann splits the perspective nicely — you always know whose head you're in, and there are sweet moments where you can hear the narrators lean into the giddiness of a new crush. Nymark gives Ben this low-key, guarded quality that works for a guy who's been burned. Hartmann plays Arthur with more eager, breathless energy, which fits a Broadway-obsessed romantic who believes the universe owes him a love story.
But the narration stays at "decent" when it needed to be extraordinary. There's no moment where either voice wrecked me. No line reading that made me press rewind and listen again with my hand over my heart. And for a book that's basically asking you to root for love against the odds? I needed that gut-punch delivery. Julia Whelan would have had me on the floor. These two kept me at arm's length. The narration in Blueprint gave me that missing gut-punch — the kind of voice work that makes you forget you're listening to a performance at all.
The Do-Over Dates Are Cute Until They're Not
So Ben and Arthur keep trying to have the perfect first date. And it keeps going wrong. Which is charming! For a while! The problem is that somewhere around the third failed attempt, the pattern starts to feel less like romantic tension and more like — okay, I'm going to say it — manufactured drama. I actually cringed a few times when arguments blew up over things that felt forced rather than real. And I say this as someone who ugly-cried four separate times during Beach Read and once during a commercial for dog food. I am not hard to crack emotionally. But the melodrama here kept pulling me out instead of pulling me in.
Arthur tries too hard. Ben doesn't try hard enough. The book knows this — it's literally the central tension. But knowing it doesn't make it less frustrating to sit with for nine-plus hours. There were stretches where I wanted to grab both of them and say just talk to each other like humans. And look, I get it, they're teenagers. I remember being seventeen and catastrophizing every text message. But as a listener in my late twenties, the emotional loops started to wear.
That Ending, Though
I won't spoil it, but I will say this: if you're coming in expecting a satisfying happily-ever-after — the kind of ending that romance readers (me, I'm romance readers) live for — you might leave frustrated. The ending feels honest for these characters' ages and circumstances, but it also feels like the book spent nine hours building something and then shrugged at the finish line. My abuela would have thrown the book across the room. She needed her telenovela payoffs, and so do I, apparently.
Who's This For (And Who Should Skip)
Pick this up if you're a fan of Albertalli and Silvera's other work and you want to hear their collaboration in Danish with solid dual narration. The New York summer setting has a warm, hopeful energy, and there are genuinely sweet moments scattered through the first half that reminded me why I love YA romance when it works.
Skip it if you need your romances to land the ending. If you're past your YA years and teen melodrama makes you itch, this one will test your patience. And if you're picky about narration — if you need a voice performance that emotionally devastates you — this is fine but not that.
My Heart Was Half-In
I wanted to love this. The bones are good. Two queer boys in New York, summer heat, Broadway references, the question of whether the universe actually has a plan. But the execution kept me at a polite distance when I wanted to be wrecked. I finished it, closed the app, and felt... okay. Not hollow, not full. Just okay. And for someone who keeps a spreadsheet of books that made her cry? "Okay" is the most disappointing verdict I can give.
