title: What If It's You?
author: Jilly Gagnon
publisher: Dell
publication date: May 13, 2025
pages: 304
peppers: 3 (on this scale)
warnings: none
summary: Laurel/Lo has been with struggling musician Ollie for five years, but when she realizes he's going to pop the question, she freaks out. In her muddle, she heads to her office, where her office friend/crush Drew is working on an alternate reality simulator. Somehow, in asking the simulator to show her what her life would have been like if she had gone out with Drew when he first asked her out, she ends up glitching between an alternate reality and her real life as she knows it.
tropes:
- the one that got away
- simulation becomes reality
- can't pick a boy
- scared of marriage
what I liked:
- There were some clever moments the narrator had in her quest to figure out how to stop glitching.
- The description of herself and her life in each place made sense given the choices she'd made.
what I didn’t like:
- The book isn't a romance by my standards. Until quite deep into the book, it's unclear which male main character Lo will end up with. We don't see them falling in love.
- There's a LOT of her inner monologue about the alternate reality "science" and her ideas about life without so much seeing the road to love.
- I didn't truly believe in her love in either reality.
overall rating: 2 (of 5 stars, though, to be fair, if someone didn't want a traditional romance and did like the science fiction elements of alternate reality, it'd probably be a 4-star read. I'm not that person.)