Reviews with content warning for Adult/minor relationship - All This Could Be Different

I ended up liking this book more than I thought I would. I found the protagonist pretty unlikeable, or at least hard to empathize with, at times. But she def grows as a character and becomes more in tune with herself, which ultimately is I think what the book is about. I think a strength of this novel is that it feels both unique and realistic. It wasn't too predictable, but the characters and situations felt like ones that could really exist.

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moniipeters's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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minchreads's review

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emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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billyjepma's review

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challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I had to read this in increments over several months, not because it wasn’t good or because I wasn’t invested, but because it rang with a truth too heavy for me to manage at the time. I will admit to not reading much fiction of this style—you all know that I live in weird genre stuff almost exclusively—so take this with a grain of salt if you want, but this is one of the most honest and truthful representations of what it feels like to be a twenty-something in America. All of the crushing anxieties over whether you’re political enough, angry at the right things, aware of your internalized prejudices, rebellious against the systems that you know will also keep you alive and happy, the quiet bitterness at how goddamn hard it all is—all of that is here in savage details that feel sharply unique yet fully relatable.

Even when the protagonist makes mistakes and acts like a shitty person, Matthew’s characterization ensures that we know it’s a side effect of a deeper issue (usually internalized racism, prejudice, or self-hatred redirected outward). Our world is messy, and the people in it are clumsy, and I appreciate it when a book lets its protagonist be messy and clumsy without defining her by those things.

The book is also rich with cultural specificities that reckon with realities I’ve never experienced or probably considered—the fears, hopes, and other turbulent, fragile emotions involved in trying to, or trying not to, assimilate into a society that might not want you. That Matthews does it with this much confidence and care feels like a massive feat. She wields emotion like a scalpel and a sledgehammer, sometimes simultaneously. It leads to a book that’s often ugly in how honest it is—which is why I had to pace my reading—but also deeply empathetic. There’s tremendous compassion in these pages, compassion that’s informed by harsh realities and supported by fragile hopes that, when carried communally, can become the precious things that keep us alive.

A wonderful book. I don’t think I’ll ever read it again, but it has left fingerprints on me.

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dhritigupta's review

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful lighthearted reflective relaxing sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

this one is a complicated 4 stars:

i really loved the prose in this, it was beautiful but also easy to read! i also felt like i haven’t seen many of these types of stories where the main character was brown and queer, so that representation was special.

that being said, i think there were a few things that detracted points for me, the main one being the way the two Black characters were handled in the book. i feel like tig and their sister were both used to explore issues that the author wasn't really in the place to explore?? like when coming from an author who isn’t black, it comes off more like perpetuating stereotypes than anything else. also feel a bit weird abt the author using aave and Black slang in those character’s dialogues for the same reasons.

i’m also kind of the in the camp that “imperfect” characters don’t have to say problematic shit for no reason… like there’s some weird stuff sneha says or thinks that i guess makes sense for the time the story is set in, but also doesn’t really add anything to the plot or her development. so why!

i feel like the romance with a white character started as a bit of commentary on how brown people are obsessed with whiteness but then evolved into a very real thing that i was supposed to ship… i cant! are u asking me to forget all those weird micro aggressions? i did not like the love interest and it made me sad to see sneha going through it for a white girl who really really wasn’t worth the trouble

last qualm: the book did suchhh a good job sometimes with describing cultural stuff/indian daughter stuff/immigrant stuff that it made me so confused when some low hanging metaphor or simile about mangos and saris was made. it was a mixed bag in that regard

i still enjoyed the book a lot though, especially with its emphasis on the power of platonic love, exploration of the feeling of safety, unique setting and descriptions of queer brown womanhood. a nice slice of life bildungsroman that was entertaining but reflective the whole way through

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lenny002's review

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emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

This book is an insane ride through the mind and the relationships of the protagonist. It's a story of a twenty-something Indian immigrant trying to make herself a life in the foreign land of America. The book discusses the politics of being an immigrant, a queer person, a person of color, etc trying to deal with internalized racism and homophobia, and make a space for herself in the so-called "land of the free".
I did not like the protagonist in the beginning because she was a bit of a bitch and was not very open-minded about the variety of gender and sexual queerness people experience. But she starts to learn to be a better friend and a better person and I really like the development she goes through. She's not very politically active, her main goal is the safety of herself and the ones she loves, and I think that's a very true experience amongst groups who have been colonized and continue to be marginalized. And as a young person of color with a desire to change the world, that was a very valid experience for me to learn about without shaming or patronizing the protagonist for being politically passive.
It has a very interesting ending, which I liked best about this book. It's neither happy nor sad; the ending hints that endings aren't really endings, rather the story is a continuous process of dealing with the present and the past and the uncertainty of the future. I really liked that the protagonist is one hot mess in denial of her wounds and her flaws until shit explodes in her face. She has managed to build herself a small community of friends-turned-family who help her clean up after herself.

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mckeelyshannon's review

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emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

One of my favorite lines from this book was “I did not know how to explain this stubborn love for my parents that I staggered under, iridescent and gigantic and veined with a terrible grief, grief for the ways their lives had been compost for my own.“

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