Tore through this. A gorgeously detailed lesbian historical novel set in 1950s San Francisco. Lo does an excellent job of conveying the nerves and excitement of first love as it becomes entangled with the social rules and bigotry of the time. I thought the occasional use of Chinese, spoken in different dialects and switching between the hanzi and romanised characters, was masterfully done, and I got a really strong sense of the culture and community of Chinatown.

My only reservation is that I felt that the flashbacks didn't quite weave into the main narrative as smoothly as I would have liked. I got a sense that Lo was trying to pack in as much accurate historical detail as possible in a way that felt a little anxious about misinterpretation. I have no doubt that some younger readers would find this helpful, but I felt that I didn't need quite so much.