Who We Could Be

by Chelsea Cameron

October 26, 2020

Buy →

Squee

More Info →

View Book Info Page

All you need to know about this book is two things:

1. It has zero percent angst and one hundred percent love, making it a perfect balm for any bad day.
2. It’s inspired by Anne of Green Gables! Anne and Diana falling in love? I was living for it from the first page to the last.

Tessa O’Connell and Montgomery “Monty” Ford are best friends. Always have been, always will be. Tessa is a loud, loveable goofball, and Monty is more serious and measured. Tessa works in the bookstore and Monty works at the library in their tiny town in Maine. Tessa will be Monty’s maid of honour in a month, and Monty will be Tessa’s matron of honour whenever Tessa and Gus finally set a date and get married.

Tessa hates Monty’s fiance, TJ, because he’ll never be good enough for her, and everyone loves Gus, who’s been Tessa’s second-best friend since childhood. Everything changes when Monty learns that TJ has been cheating on her and then Tessa’s engagement falls apart not too much later. When they decide to go out and practice dating together? That’s when the biggest change of all happens.

I don’t want to shock you, but Monty has black hair and Tessa has bright red hair and freckles. Because, like I said, this is inspired by Anne of Green Gables. How well does it reinvent the original material? I’m not sure because all I have is hazy, childhood memories of tearing through the books and the miniseries. To me, it felt like the essence of the characters was there, with other cute touches like Monty’s name being a tribute to Lucy Maud Montgomery. It may not hold up for purists, but I’d still recommend it because, ohhhh my god, it’s ADORABLE.

Who We Could Be helped me realize that I have a favourite sub-category within friends-to-lovers romances: everyone knows the leads are in love except them. This is not a book about watching two people falling in love. It’s about two people who love each other deeply recognizing the romantic dimension of their relationship. The evidence is everywhere. In the first chapter, Monty wraps her arms around Tessa from behind while Tessa’s making them tea, resting her chin on Tessa’s shoulder in a way that made me say “Oh yes, just gals being pals.”

Or when Monty stays with Tessa and her family after breaking up with TJ, and Tessa doesn’t understand why she falls apart when Monty announces she’s going back to her own apartment. Hell, the only time Tessa and Monty fight is after Monty’s breakup with TJ, because Tessa is so mad that Monty never picks men who are good enough for her. I highlighted this passage after they make up with the comment “DEFINITELY NOT GAY:”

Tessa touched my face and stared into my eyes.

“You’re enough, Ford. You’re everything.” I looked down at her and I felt even warmer as something fluttered in my chest. TJ may not have loved me, but Tessa did. At least I had that. I had her, and she wasn’t going anywhere.

“Thanks. I don’t feel like that right now,” I said.

“I know. But you will. You’ll get through this because you’re strong and you’re amazing and I know you’re going to find someone who’s worthy of you.” I snorted.

“You don’t think any guy is worthy of me.”

There was chocolate on her mouth, and I thought about wiping it away, but I didn’t. “Well, that’s because no guy is.”

And at this point, they still both think they’re straight!

Aside from the usual sense of “well, it’s a romance…”, there is no question whether these two will end up together. It’s only a matter of when. I didn’t even care that there’s no angst, because there’s enough tension around the question of when they’ll each figure out their feelings. This includes both of them understanding that they’re gay, and each of them do so at their own pace. Even before she can admit to herself that she’s a lesbian, I was both relieved and sad for Monty when she finally asks herself why she had ever planned to marry TJ. She clearly hadn’t been happy with him:

Why, indeed? To answer that question, I went back to the beginning. He’d asked me out, I’d said yes and then… that was it. He was my boyfriend and then my fiancé . He was the guy. That was how it worked. You graduated, you got a job, you got a guy, you got married, you had kids. That was the plan, that was the dream, that was everything I’d ever wanted. Right? But was he really what I wanted? I didn’t have an answer for that.

I was a little surprised at first that they both thought they were straight, because I went into the book assuming one or both of them were bisexual, pansexual, or considered themselves queer. It made sense once I realized Monty had put a lot of stock in the idea of what her life was supposed to be, and Tessa had never paused to consider what she felt for Gus. And while TJ might be a cheating shitbag, Gus is wonderful. With the palpable warmth between them (he is her second-best friend, after all) and the way their parents talked for years about them getting married someday, it was easy to understand how Tessa had fallen into an engagement with Gus.

Although I enjoyed Monty and recognized myself in her the most, Tessa is my favourite character. While she can sometimes be frustrating for Monty because Tessa is a “cut first, measure later” kind of person, she has such a big heart and some of her impulse control problems are hilarious. Here are just a few of my favourite things about Tessa, all of which made me feel like I knew exactly what kind of person she is:

• When she’s bored one night, Tessa’s relieved that Monty calls her because she’s this close (imagine my fingers are almost touching) to looking up old high school enemies on social media.
• When Monty can’t sleep, Tessa will talk to her about random things until Monty passes out. That might be about how Corn Flakes were invented to stop people from masturbating, or it might be about the book that inadvertently started the Satanic Panic.
• Tessa would rather scour a bridal store for the most hideous wedding dresses than try on a dress for her own wedding. (Same, girl.)

Who We Could Be is generally very queer, which made my heart happy. In addition to Tessa and Monty both figuring out that they’re lesbians, Tessa’s bosses are two gay men who are married to each other, there’s an asexual side character, and Tessa has trans lesbian aunts who are also married to each other. The aunts stole the show for me in a couple of spots, especially when they offered to hide TJ’s body when they first heard about him cheating on Monty.

My only issue is that I found it a little slow in the middle, from when Monty moves back to her apartment to when they decide to go on a practice date together. Unfortunately, that’s probably half the book. After thinking about it, I realized that it was an expectation problem. The blurb mentions their practice date as the catalyst for them getting together, so I spent the middle of the book wondering when they were going on the damn date already.

I cheered when Tessa and Monty were finally both single and ready for their practice date, because I was dying for them to recognize that they’re in love. It’s so obvious that they’re the most important people in the world to each other, so I was smiling and happy sighing every page from there on out. I’ve reread the book since then and savoured the whole thing, because I knew exactly what to expect.

Who We Could Be has a permanent spot on my “to reread” list. I love it so much, I want to kiss it on the face. It’s sweet, cute, funny, and gives me a happy sigh every time I think about it. If you adore angst and can’t read a romance without it, this might not be your jam. Either way, I recommend at least downloading a sample, because you’ll know within the first chapter whether you’ll fall in love with these characters as much as I did.