A sweet, light, but slightly predictable queer romcom. It was a fun romp and a lovely palette cleanser between more serious books. I loved that this book was a coming out story without explicitly being a coming out story. This book lacked the “good” conflict for me - I’m used to having that big third act breakup that brings our love birds back together for good, so I was searching for that big moment a bit. That being said, this book does a beautiful job covering queer history and what it was like to be a closeted professional gay man in 1950’s-1960’s NYC. I enjoyed the historical references, and also found the main characters’ discussions about sexuality, race, politics, and class enlightening and thoughtful. Overall a unique and fun look at a gay romcom.

It's still early in the year, but I've got the feeling this is going to be my favorite book of 2024. This story just hit all the right notes for me. It's a perfect blend of so many of the tropes I adore: friends to lovers, roommates to lovers, workplace romance, mutual pining. The execution of the mix was so well done, too: the way their emotional proximity kept growing, how the closer they got the more they felt they had to hide while getting more and more open with each other. How they see certain things about each other so clearly, almost more so than they see certain things about themselves, but get hopelessly tangled with others until they get just the right nudge. How they both make each other not only happier, but better.

The characters are so alive on the page—not just Andy and Nick, but everyone who surrounds them. There was that cool feeling that the main leads were carving this bubble for themselves that was just for them two in many ways, but they wouldn't be able to do it if they weren't surrounded by other people along the way. People like Emily and her friends, but also people like Andy's father or Nick's big complicated family, despite the tumultuous relationships they had, and people like their coworkers, and all the other queer people in New York whose lives touched those only tangentially—through glances exchanged in the streets or articles in the newspapers. I'm an absolute sucker for deeply character-driven stories like this, and so many of Andy's and Nick's experiences and feelings resonated with me so much, too. From Andy's very obvious ADHD to Nick's struggled habit of concealing big parts of his identity, there was always something that made me go, "Yeah, been there."

There was also this very clear sense of place and historical period that I enjoyed a lot. So many scenes and locations were so vividly depicted that I almost felt I was watching a movie, and I'm not a super visual reader. Due to the realities of that time, there is a strong impact of period-appropriate homophobia, but in spite of it, there's a lot of queer joy and thriving to offset the angst, even if it has to happen under wraps. Especially since the wraps are coming down, what with all those small subplots about the articles or the increasing number of queer books reviewed by Nick's colleague—some of them even non-tragic.

If I had to nitpick, I could perhaps note how there were a few instances of the prose not being quite clear, or how maybe in a few places the intersections of character arcs and external plot evens could be tightened up. But I'm not in the mood to nitpick at all—I just loved the entire experience.  Honestly, I could go on and on about so many aspects of the story because it gave me All The Feels. Ultimately, it's a beautiful slice of life with so much heart, and I think I'll re-read it someday, even though there are so many books and so little time.

I enjoyed this, I like the characters and the relatively slow burn of the plot. It was, however, weird that in the resolution of secondary aspects of the plot there's a message of "while some cops are corrupt the institution can be saved through self-correction". That was especially jarring in a book about queer men in the 1950s. It’s always dicey for me when a protagonist has a relative who is a cop, especially when that relative is portrayed as being "one of the good ones". On its own the story could be fine, but it ends up contributing to this overall social trend of copaganda in fiction, whether accidentally or intentionally.

This was an incredible story, surpassing all my expectations. I picked this up expecting a nice but fairly generic romance, and while the romance was not lacking, there was real depth to the plot and characters in addition to the quality of the writing being excellent. The setting was believable and the ending didn't feel contrived or implausible as many historical queer romances do.