Yes No Maybe So

Jamie Goldberg chokes the moment a camera or a crowd appears; he is better behind the scenes of a campaign than in front of one. Maya Rehman was expecting a good summer — instead her parents are separating and her best friend has left town. Their mothers, old friends, push them into knocking on doors together for a state senate special election.

What starts as an errand becomes something the two of them own. A bill working its way through the legislature turns out to target people like Maya, and the campaign stops being an abstraction. The banter turns into a friendship and the friendship starts turning into something else, at the speed a first crush actually moves.

Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed alternate chapters between the two narrators. It is a warm, funny young adult contemporary about political organising at the doorstep level, written with real affection for the tedium and the small wins.