Mathews offers us a panoramic view of mingled desires, fears, and joys that will be familiar to readers of Eliot and Austen, but she does them one better: her novel is about an underrepresented first-generation immigrant, and it’s incredibly gay ... manages the rare feat of being both lyrical and page-turning ... t’s this focus on Sneha’s desires that makes the novel particularly luminous. Simple actions — sleeping with whomever you want to sleep with, making meaningful connections with your friends — become radical, a message that will be especially resounding in a contemporary America where LGBTQIA2S+ rights are under attack ... The novel is at its best when we’re given a clear glimpse of the emotional shibboleth separating Sneha from Marina ... Mathews’s brilliance lies in her ability to capture the terra infirma of Sneha’s emotional landscape, resistant to the superficial diagnostic categories of American pop psych. Barred from being difficult, Sneha has become a mystery to herself ... Mathews is careful not to make examples of her characters, however; there is no how to act in this book, just a lot of clumsy, well-intentioned acting. In a truly genius move, the novel doesn’t value Sneha’s friends over Marina or vice versa: all of them are swept up in the chaotic epochs of their own histories, trying to survive and loving each other throughout. This love is in large part what makes the novel so inviting ... Mathews is a gifted prose stylist ... The prose, coupled with the characters’ love, makes for a novel that is incredibly warm, considering its difficult subject matter. American xenophobia, figuring out one’s life post–economic collapse, volatility, and heartbreak: all this is cast in the inviting glow of Mathews’s smart and elegant sentences. This is one reason among many that the novel is so hard to put down ... Few debuts are as precisely drawn as this one, but then All This Could Be Different is an exceptional novel. With characters compassionately rendered and a story that speaks to the experience of a first-generation queer millennial, All This Could Be Different is the kind of book many readers will need as much as they want, and we’re lucky to have it.

... the stuff all good bildungsromans are made of ... What starts as a story about romantic love quickly turns into one about the power of community, how the people we surround ourselves with can together be the great love of our life ... Mathews has a wonderful eye for the things that make friendship and community just as valuable as romance — and also for how friends can come together and fall apart just as easily as the lovers in a romantic comedy ... proves the corny adage true: Perhaps the real treasure was the friends we made along the way. Mathews has a big heart and a sharp tongue.

... wonderfully immersive and concentrated ... a novel so good I was torn by the incompatible desires to never set it down and never finish it ... the characters’ hopes, dreams, and desires are so fully rendered on the page that it’s difficult not to absorb them ... A masterclass in character development, All This Could Be Different provides a textured view of friendship. It looks at not just how we show up for and tend to the people we care about but also how we fail them ... queer as fuck. And not only in its dating storylines or queer sex scenes but also in its rendering of friendship as every bit as propulsive, impactful, radiant, and heartbreaking as romantic relationships. As every bit as messy as family, too. It is perhaps the greatest depiction of what chosen family really means without ever explicitly using those words ... smart, layered, and often very serious, but it is also very horny (and none of those things contradict each other but rather work together) ... There’s a sex scene involving a car’s gear stick that I don’t even want to describe too much so as not to spoil its wonders, so strange and hot and real. The kind of queer sex I crave from literature, exploratory and revelatory ... Mathew’s prose is remarkable throughout, short, bright bursts of fragments between languid, snaking sentences that surprise ... Whether she’s writing about Gantt charts or economic turmoil or oysters or blue and green or sex or hunger, Mathews’ sentences seduce and swathe. Here is a sprawling novel that’s still intimate at every turn, compacting so much into its shape, like a fistful of sand. And it is a testament to the strength of the character writing that I genuinely feel like I could read about them for much longer, that I didn’t want the story to ever end. But so much of this book is also about eschewing endings, about imagining the future and also recognizing the way other people ripple-effect our lives. So even its ending doesn’t feel like a conclusion so much as an embrace and a gentle nudge forward ... the novel dares to suggest that even within our interpersonal conflicts with each other, there are chances for connection and for growth. We just have to allow ourselves to take them.

... will unexpectedly destroyed the reader. On a surface level, it is a bildungsroman for queer millennials, complete with a reference to Goethe, capturing the mundanity and fragility of existence under capitalism, the ever-present threat of poverty, and the incandescent promise of joy ... what sets Mathews’ novel apart is the brittle, aching beauty of her prose, which knifes through the reader with the force of a revelation ... Sneha’s narration vacillates between caustically irreverent to sentences that snare the reader with truth ... While not self-referential, Sneha’s character grapples with the quintessential project of any good writing: how to shape life into story, imbuing it with meaning ... Mathews captures that turbulence. Over the course of the novel, Sneha, surrounded by a compelling cast of supporting characters, finds love (and loses it), finds hope (and loses it, only to find it again), finds community (and learns how to sustain it), and by the story’s end, at last finds the prickly, raw, unbearably vulnerable wound of herself—and where to turn for healing ... Mathews brings the disparate narrative threads of the novel together, reaffirming the reader’s faith in humanity despite—and because—of Sneha’s reluctance to recognize it ... The novel is also frankly hilarious. The humor is quintessentially millennial, speaking through a generational lens that will nonetheless appeal to a wider readership, and is also subversive. The text exchanges are real and rich with character voice. The social commentary is bitingly funny. The repartee between friends invites the reader in without ever feeling forced. Mathews uses this humor to skillfully delve into the many facets of her characters’ personalities, revealing the ways in which we hide from each other as well as share ourselves ... perfect for readers interested in the complexities of coming of age in this modern world. While some readers might find the social justice narratives distracting, others will recognize how skillfully Mathews uses the social commentary of the supporting cast to complicate the reader’s understanding of Sneha’s experiences. Never is the novel naively idealistic, nor does it veer too deeply into trauma. The result is a balance of grief and joy that readers will find both cathartic and inspiring—because Mathews is right. All this could be different.

One of the achievements of Mathews’s writing is that she precisely captures the dreaded visa conversation ... Mathews’s novel successfully captures the anxiousness, scariness, and precariousness of building a life in America as an immigrant.

... polished ... Recounting this heady time a decade or so later, Sneha is a magnetic teller of her tale of finding love, growing up, and summoning the power to change—and choose—her life. Kindred to Brandon Taylor’s stellar Real Life (2020), this novel burrows deep.

Perhaps it's too soon to say which books we'll look back on in 50 years as the ones that defined a generation, but Sarah Thankam Mathews' debut, a close-to-perfect coming-of-age romp, is surely a contender. Bitingly funny and sweetly earnest, it's one of those rare novels that feels just like life, its characters so specific in their desires and experiences that you're sure you've met them—or maybe you're about to ... In the manner of books that stay with you forever, All This Could Be Different is a singular story that extends beyond itself ... Lives are made up of so many ordinary moments, so many conflicting emotions, so many messes—some world-shattering, some mundane. It's all here in this funny, vibrant, heartbreaking book.

Using humor and beautiful prose, Mathews successfully tackles timely and serious subjects. Despite all the hardships they face, Sneha and the other well-rounded characters are able to build their futures because enduring friendships enable them to persist and even thrive. Ultimately, the novel’s title is its prophetic and vitally hopeful message. Highly recommended.

In her debut novel, Mathews achieves what so often seems to be impossible: a deeply felt 'novel of ideas,' for lack of a better phrase. Mathews somehow tackles the big abstractions—capitalism, gender, sexuality, Western individualism, etc.—while at the same time imbuing her characters with such real, flawed humanity that they seem ready to walk right off the page. Rarely is dialogue rendered so accurately ... In her prose, Mathews can be deeply moving at the same time that she is funny; she dips into slang in a way that feels lyrical and rhythmic ... If the novel seems to drag toward the end, this feels like a small, stingy criticism for a book that is, as a whole, beautifully written, lusciously felt, and marvelously envisioned ... Resplendent with intelligence, wit, and feeling.

... poignant and illuminating ... Mathews is most affecting when charting the wonders of community-building, delving into the strenuous work that goes into sustaining meaningful friendships as well as the heartbreak that ensues when connections are fractured by dishonesty. This thoughtful exploration of the legacies of trauma makes an impact.