This book was an interesting one.

I don't even know if I can call it a story. Not in a bad way though don't get me wrong. But when I think of a story I see a beginning, conflict, it being resolved and it ending in a rounded way. But with this book I felt like we really just were looking into a period of life. And nobody's actual lives has a beginning or an end outside of birth and death. We jumped into their lives right before covid and read that period through that. But all of these characters had a life before covid, and will continue to live after covid was done and so thus the book.
And while that is quite unusual for me to read a book like that, I actually quite liked it.

We get an insight of life into people across the queer spectrum and that was a lot of fun. As a trans person I was curious to see how the trans character was going to be written, but I quite liked it in the end. Like almost any trans person coming out it didn't go without hiccups for him, but I also felt it nice it wasn't one big trans pain narrative. I enjoyed seeing him start to be himself and feel better and was all together just really proud at another trans person becoming their true self.

We also follow quite a bit of a gay couple and their son, who go on holiday and meet another family there. There is also a blind man that gets involved with the neighbor living next to him. And to be honest, as a younger gay man it was really nice reading about gay men that are older and just living their life. I don't really get to meet any because I can't leave the house much because of my disability, so I don't feel like I have any gay elders to lean on, or the opportunity to meet them. Because of that this book felt like a hug to me personally, even though it clearly isn't meant as a cozy book.

Outside of the characters mentioned above the cast is really huge but it worked together so really well. It definitely had me confused at the start, but the book introduced everyone really well so it wasn't like that for very long. All characters felt connected in some way and the way the story wove together their lives was really amazing. I have never seen it done like that and it is absolutely the biggest strength of this book.

All together this was a great book and I very much recommend it for people who like contemporary life stories about queer people.


I received an eARC of this book and this was my honest review.