All This Could Be Different

A Phenomenal Book Club Pick • A Vogue Book Club Pick • A The Rumpus Book Club Pick

"All This Could Be Different is a bildungsroman, a gorgeous queer love story, and a musing on labor and immigration. But you’ll fall most in love with its wickedly sharp narrator, who’s funny, passionate, and complicated." —The Cut

"If you’ve ever wanted to read a love letter to friendship, this is it . . . Through exquisite observations, Sarah Thankam Mathews reflects on the gift of having people you can count on, who anchor you through new chapters." —NPR’s "Books We Love"

From a brilliant new voice comes an electrifying novel of a young immigrant building a life for herself—a warm, dazzling, and profound saga of queer love, friendship, work, and precarity in twenty-first century America.

Graduating into the long maw of an American recession, Sneha is one of the fortunate ones. She’s moved to Milwaukee for an entry-level corporate job that, grueling as it may be, is the key that unlocks every door: she can pick up the tab at dinner with her new friend Tig, get her college buddy Thom hired alongside her, and send money to her parents back in India. She begins dating women—soon developing a burning crush on Marina, a beguiling and beautiful dancer who always seems just out of reach.

But before long, trouble arrives. Painful secrets rear their heads; jobs go off the rails; evictions loom. Sneha struggles to be truly close and open with anybody, even as her friendships deepen, even as she throws herself headlong into a dizzying romance with Marina. It’s then that Tig begins to draw up a radical solution to their problems, hoping to save them all.

A beautiful and capacious novel rendered in singular, unforgettable prose, All This Could Be Different is a wise, tender, and riveting group portrait of young people forging love and community amidst struggle, and a moving story of one immigrant’s journey to make her home in the world.

PRAISE
"This bold and wide-ranging novel sets its sights on what it really means to be ‘okay’ . . . [asking] questions that have consumed innumerable 20-somethings . . . Mathews expertly captures and elevates the position of being a young queer person in the post-recession U.S. with many more questions than answers." —Emma Spector, Vogue

"[What] initially blew me away was the clarity of Mathews’ writing and the accuracy with which she describes experiences I’d previously taken for granted. Her writing is funny, incisive . . . This book gave me a lot to ponder, but ultimately left me hopeful." —David Vogel, Buzzfeed