Yes No Maybe So is a YA novel about two seventeen-year-olds who meet when they're both canvassing for their local state special election. Jamie Goldberg is interested in politics and volunteers for his local Democrat candidate, but feels like he is terrible at talking to anyone. Maya Rehman is dealing with her parents separating, her best friend having no time for her, and her mum deciding she should try political canvassing to fill her now empty summer. When Jamie and Maya start going door-to-door to engage with people, it isn't quite what either of them expected.

This political activism tinged teenage romance is split between the two main characters' points of view, and this is used to show their differing perspectives, religions, and cultural contexts, as well as their similarities and shared interests. It works well for the premise, allowing things like Jamie's cluelessness about how Ramadan works to be balanced with Maya's perspective on how her family mark Muslim traditions. The book is heavy on both the awkward teen romance and the teenage political idealism, but that's the point, and it's a fun book that does try and raise a few issues whilst mostly being about the two main characters' growing relationship.

This book!!! 😍😍😍

Okay gimme a second to recollect my memory of ever reading a book as cute and adorable as this one. It is like the authors found an ocean of cuteness and poured it all on this book.

Every damn chapter was so freaking cuteeeeee!!!

And it never felt cloyingly cute at all!!

Gosh, my review will be mostly incoherent fangirling but I don't care. This book should and must be fangirled over and I love it so so much!! I can't wait till February 2020 anymore!!

So first of all, I was so moved by the special note Becky and Aisha left in the beginning. So poignant and beautiful. I was so moved!!

This is not just a teen romcom book. It is both an important and a fluff book. It is full of fluff but also has lots of important portrayals and messages and representations. It shows us how you can balance all of it and still have a stunning book that's not at all serious toned but tackles serious issues and topics perfectly.

So the book is from two POV, 17yo American Jewish boy, Jamie Goldberg and 17yo Pakistani-American Muslim girl, Maya Rehman. The POV is back-to-back, so we get equal number of chapters. Set in a small town in Georgia, the story depicts how two teen of two marginalized background come together to do poilitcal canvassing before a local election, and fight against Islamophobia and antisemitism. Lots of amazing and cute romantic tropes you'll find here and I love the ending! So realistic and hopeful.

Now I'm gonna gush over the characters!

I knew I'd love Jamie when he saw Maya and assumed her background as South Asian. NOT INDIAN. NOT PAKISTANI. Unlike most other non-South Asians. He said South Asian and I was sold on his part.

He. Is. Just. So. Cute!!

I mean it! He's so adorable!! I wanna adopt him as my lil bro OMG. He's sweet and kind and understanding and dorky and a total cinnamon roll. That's right. A cinnamon roll softie boy. I love him so so much!!

And he invented the word Slowmance!! Perfect for how their relationship develops.

And once you get him around Maya, he becomes such a cute and shy lover boy. Gosh, I see them together and I just wanna ship them till eternity!!

And Maya?? OMG the perfect perfect perfect girl for him. While he's a nervous wreck, she's a confident vocal girl. But don't take it that she never gets nervous and scared or he is always a nervous puddle. Nope. As the story progresses, you'll find them standing up for each other or melting for each other. They're the ultimate OTP goal and I just...

*heart eyes*

And I loved how supportive and kind others are toward their relationship! Sophie, Jamie's lil sis, is just so amazing!! So cute and perky and full of energy. What Jamie lacks in speech, Sophie makes up for it. She's just too fun!!

And OMG!! Jamie's grandma is so adorable!! I hope if this book ever gets a film deal, I get to see InstaGramm in action. Gosh, she's so so cute!! Jamie inherited all those cuteness.

I also love the small sprinkles of so many good rep. Like how even though you can be financially less privileged than others, you can still be privileged when it comes to your skin color. Or even if you're a Muslim woman, that doesn't mean you have to wear hijab or not wear it. This book shows us how white supremacy and white nationalism can be so so dangerous and cruel. The 2016 election and its subsequent effects on USA are aptly shown here and I applaud the authors for this.

CW for the book:
White nationalism, white supremacy, antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism, F-word.

Thank you, NetGalley UK and Simon & Schuster UK for providing me with an eARC of this amazing book. I can't wait to get my hands on this adorable book.

Get on this book now!!

I want to thank Netgalley for providing me with this book in exchange for my honest review.

I have to say I honestly really couldn’t get enough of this book!
The characters were really interesting and drew me into the story right away!
Jamie and Maya were amazing main characters I was rooting for them from the start.
The writing was amazing it flowed really well I was never bored and just wanted to keep reading to see what happened.
I read it all in one sitting but was a little disappointed with the ending.
4 stars

This was an extremely entertaining and educational book for me. Growing up I never really paid much attention to politics or who the prime minster was at the time. I couldn’t vote so didn’t see the point in finding out what was happening. Then I was 18 and still had no idea what I was really doing.
Then trump got in in the US and I found myself thinking just what the hell was going on. Here was a man who to me seemed terrible and people had voted him in. This sexist, racist, discriminatory  man had somehow become president of the US.
Then Brexit started over here and has been such a huge mess and I realised that maybe I do need to start paying more attention to politics.
Just like this book showed me. Even when you can’t vote you can still spark change. You can try to make the world a better place. You need to fight for the things that matter to you and use your vote wisely. 
The characters were extremely well written and relatable and I loved how they opened my eyes to issues I sometimes brush over.
I think this book is incredibly important and one teens everywhere should read. It shows them that it’s never to early to start thinking about the change you want to see in the world and every little action you do can help.
You need to think about these things and consider the type of world you want to live in.

This is another classically adorable contemporary YA novel from Becky Albertalli, this time co-writing with Aisha Saeed. However, Yes No Maybe So worked a lot better for me than Albertalli's last collaboration, What If It's Us, perhaps because I simply prefer Saeed's prose to that of the previous collaborator, Adam Silvera (I don't like his stand-alone novels either). Yes No Maybe So stars Jamie and Maya, two teenagers who aren't old enough to vote but who become passionately involved with a local campaign in their home state of Georgia to get a Democrat candidate, Rossum, elected to the Senate after the Republican incumbent steps down. But will Jamie and Maya get together as well as getting Rossum elected?

The story is told in alternating chapters from Maya and Jamie, and Albertalli and Saeed handle this collaboration well. At first I was worried that this was going to be a bit simplistically lefty, with both characters info-dumping about how bad racism and Republicans are (I think both these things are bad, but I don't think it makes very good fiction when the authors simply tell readers what they want them to know). However, as Maya and Jamie get more involved in the campaign, the issues raised become more complex, and both Albertalli and Saeed are good at writing arguments where neither character is totally in the right - a confrontation between Maya and her former best friend Sara is particularly well done. Both authors share Albertalli's tendency to make sure that characters admit everything wrong they've ever done by the end of the story, so there's no room for ambiguity, but this suits the tone of this sweet novel. Not quite as good as Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda or Leah on the Offbeat, but definitely worth reading, and it's inspired me to seek out more by Saeed as well.

I will cross-post this review to Amazon after the publication date.