One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston was my attempt to celebrate Pride month in style.
August moves to New York City, finds herself living with a bunch of roommates, finishing college, and waiting tables at a 24-hour diner while dodging her mother's phone calls because her mother only wants to talk about August's uncle, who has been missing since before August was born. Meanwhile, she meets this hot chick named Jane on the Q train and there's something not quite right about her.
At one point, just as I was starting this book, Lisa wrote a comment on one of my posts that this book was overly long and she got bored with it, and the warning sirens started going off in my head. Lisa was not wrong, my friends. This book is over 400 pages and it feels like it.
The Good: I liked the diverse set of LGBTQ+ folks that surrounded August. She found herself a wonderful set of friends and co-workers and I thought that was great. The interactions among the friend group were my favorite parts of the book.
The Bad: August is a petulant, whiny brat. What Jane sees in her is anyone's guess. Also, the frequent sexual encounters on a train were really not my jam. (It's been years since I've been to NYC, but I don't remember subway cars being empty OR clean. Yuck.)
The Magic: You guys, there's unexplained magic. I'm just not on board with magic without rules. I guess the time travel stuff was used for the important aspect of talking about gay history and how so many LGBTQ+ people just went missing, but even that caveat was not worth the ridiculousness of the magic. I think there were ways to write the story without magic and it was so very distracting.
The Length: Take out the magic plot, make Jane a girl August meets on the subway, have it happen that Jane's mom used to know August's uncle, make August less a whiny brat, take out all the plotting over having an electrical outage, how Jane doesn't know modern pop culture, and sex in public, and you could have easily taken out 100 pages of this and had a tighter, sweeter story.
It's a fine book, but I wanted it to be a great book.
3/5 stars
Lines of Note:
She's clearly good enough at what she does that her boss doesn't mind her decorating her workstation with a home-made cross-stitch that says BIG DICK ENERGY IS GENDER NEUTRAL. (page 167)
"It's nothing special," Wes grumbles as he shoulders past her to the kitchen.
"Tell him what kind."
There's a heavy pause in which she can practically hear Wes's teeth grinding.
"Orange cardamom with a maple chai drizzle," he bites out with all the fury in his tiny body.
"Oh shit, that's what my sister's bringing," Isaiah says.
Wes looks stricken. "Really?" (page 177)
You're obviously a good book reviewer, because I feel like I understand this book completely from your description. Yes, I would want it to be shorter. Unexplained magic is a big no. And I don't like main characters who are whiny brats. Oh, and if they're having sex regularly on subway cars, this author is out of her mind- that doesn't happen.
ReplyDeleteYour feelings really align with mine. It was "just fine" and should have been at least 100 pages shorter. Then it might have been a better/great book!
ReplyDeleteYes, yes, yes, yes, yes. TO EVERYTHING YOU SAID. I think the magical element was unnecessary and also didn't really make sense with the ending. It definitely needed a sharper edit because it was just way too long and meandering. I wanted to love this book so much more than I did because Red, White & Royal Blue was just soooo good. Ugh.
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