One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston – Book review, aka marry me Jane Su 💕✨

Hello lovelies!

I had a 24hour readathon on the last sunday of June and I finally picked up One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston which was one of my most ancitipates releases of 2021! I am happy to say that it lived up to my expectations! 🥰

Title: One Last Stop

Author: Casey McQuiston

Summary: For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures.

But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train.

Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August’s day when she needed it most. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane doesn’t just look like an old school punk rocker. She’s literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it’s time to start believing in some things, after all.

Casey McQuiston’s One Last Stop is a magical, sexy, big-hearted romance where the impossible becomes possible as August does everything in her power to save the girl lost in time.

5 stars: Persephone – Queen of the Underworld and Goddess of Spring. Persephone is my favourite goddess because she is full of contradictions – she represents both strength as queen of the underworld and a softness as a floral maiden. She teaches me how it’s okay to be both. If Persephone appears, that means that the book was one of the best books I’ve ever read, that it holds a particular place in my heart and that it is now part of my favourite books ever.

Pheme: The goddess of fame, gossip and renown – This goddess will be invoked when a book has received a lot of attention and is praised by critics and the book community. She will be featured whether the book lived up to my expectations or not.

Iris– Goddess of rainbows. Nothing new here, we all know that rainbows represent the LGBTQ+ community so this Goddess will be featured whenever a queer relationship or character appears.

Athena– Goddess of wisdom, poetry, art, and the strategic side of war. I will feature the goddess whenever there is a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Person of Colour) because they are a symbol of resilience, strength and wisdom to me. I also want to put forth African folkore, myths and gods and since Athena is the goddess of poetry and art I thought it was fitting.

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Review

I read this book in one sitting and it was a wild (subway) ride. I apologize for this bad pun.

One thing I love about Casey McQuiston’s stories is the way that they write their characters. This is why I loved Red, White and Royal Blue and this is why I loved One Last Stop.

The supporting characters here were magnificent.
In Cemetery Boys , one of the characters says something along the lines of “queer people, we travel in packs”. And this is very much true here. I loved how there were so many types of representation from the LGBTQ+ community and how unapologetically queer it was.
Aside from that aspect. I also loved how every single person from apartment 6F felt like a friend and I was genuinely shocked when I stoped reading that these characters are, in fact, not real?? . They all had their quirks and their own voice and I felt like they were my own family. The found family trope here was beautifully done.

I also adored the writing style. McQuiston has a unique and singular way of narrating their story and being inside August’s head as she lost her mind over Jane’s hotness was everything I ever wished for. It was nice to see August navigating her feelings and finally finding a sense of belonging and finding herself. All of the characters brought something to her and to us (readers) but also existed for themselves and that was beautiful. I loved the attention to details and how so many aspects were tied to the five senses and especially the sense of smell (which I am very in tune with). I felt like I was smelling pancakes and partying in New York at night lit by the lights of the city, hearing Patti Labelle at 2am and seeing and listening to a colorful drag show. I was there and I could see it. So many of the moments in the book felt like memories and I think I even feel nostalgia thinking about them as though I lived them. No one does it like Casey McQuiston.

The plot in itself: I’m not usually a fan of time travel because I have *so many questions* related to time traveling and I actually still have sole questions after reading OLS but I very much liked the way everything was tied together. It was like a detective case that we were trying to solve as to WHY Jane was actually stuck in a subway and most how importantly, how to send her back to her own time and what would happen. The story made sense and I like the subplots especially when everything was fully explained. I think it was so clever on the author’s part.

However, the best aspect of this book (among many others!!) was the romance. I have never fallen for a character harder than I have for Jane Su. I am in love with her just as many other people before me. Jane is what dreams are made of and I loved seeing August losing her cool over her attraction to Jane. I would lose mine too. The moments they shared were swoon-worthy and I loved reading about August’s sexual panic. The scenes were not particularly graphic but they weren’t “fade to black” either. It was the perfect balance to to make me blush (as much as I, a dark skinned black woman, can blush) and scream. August and Jane’s steamy scenes also seemed intimate and loving and I loved the way their romance evolved. I died whenever they kissed “for research”.

This book was everything that I dreamed of and more!