I really struggled with this book, because I wanted to love it and I just didn't. I spent a long time struggling with this and examining those feelings, because I was worried it was internalized misogyny, but I realized that has nothing to do with it, and half the books I read are sapphic anyway.

One Last Stop is a light-hearted romcom set in New York City. But for me, it was almost too light-hearted. The stakes didn't feel real, and the characters, particularly Jane, felt a little too paper-thin.

The story is both slow and fast at the same time. The beginning was slow because there is nothing else really happening besides the main relationship, and the main relationship takes a while to get going.

August is a very ambivalent main character. She felt more solid than Jane, but she also didn't feel fully developed. Moving away from a crime-obsessed mother, and being on the run didn't seem to have a huge impact on August besides having a blank slate as a past. The fact that she had no prior relationships or friends at 23 just didn't seem real.

Compared to the side characters, who were all viscerally interesting and I wanted more of, Jane and August seemed kind of... flat. Jane is literally stuck in time and can't remember her past, but even as she starts to remember, her past doesn't feel real. Jane is from the 70's--a really important and often dark time in queer history, and McQuinston touches on it, but never addresses it in a serious way. It felt like the 70's was just for the vibe or the aesthetic, and the details are murky and unimportant.

There is nothing happening in this book. August is trying to finish school, after transferring and changing her major for the 5th time, and has a job at an old pancake joint. But about halfway through the novel she stops going to work for A MONTH and skips school for A MONTH to be with Jane and there are absolutely no consequences for these actions. Because there are no stakes, when the time came for an actual stake (Jane either gets sent back to her time or is effectively destroyed) it didn't feel real, there was no suspense, because I knew she would be back.

The side characters are so infinitely more interesting than the main ones, Niko being my favorite. I almost wish this book was about Niko and Myla's relationship (and the fact that they gather queers like orphaned children) or just more of a focus on the apartment inhabitants in general because Wes and Isaiah's relationship was also so much fun.


And now, because it's inevitable that this will happen: the RWRB comparison. This book made me realize that contemporary romances aren't really for me. Red White and Royal Blue was an outlier: I love Texas, and I am a politics junkie. The US presidential election is my Superbowl. I know all the counties baby. That is what made RWRB appeal to me outside of the romance aspect. One Last Stop is like a cheesy love letter to New York City, which I personally feel very ambivalent about, so it didn't resonate with me there. Where Alex and Henry both had such strong personalities, I feel Jane and August were lacking: August didn't have much of a personality and Jane was all personality to where it erased the historical elements and the racial ones.


This was a fun read, and a good time, but didn't leave a lasting impression on me, and didn't live up to the very high expectations I had. I wanted to love this book, and instead I just kinda liked it, which is it's own disappointment. 

3/5 time traveling lesbian stars