4.5 stars. Somewhat spoilery below? I hid the big spoilers but tread lightly if you want to go in completely blind

Content warnings (available on the author's website):

Spoiler

On-page: Drinking, light drug use (weed), semi-public sex, exploration of depression and anxiety, memory loss and cognitive issues, familial estrangement, familial death, grief, missing persons, implied PTSD

Off-page, past, and alluded to: Homophobic violence and hate speech, police violence, the AIDS crisis, racism, childhood neglect, arson, historic hate crime resulting in loss of life

Thank you to St. Martin’s Griffin (via NetGalley) for the ARC!

Most of the time my reviews are very full of emotions, because that’s just how I am as a reviewer. I don’t talk a lot about structure or plot or character development, but I do talk a lot about how a book makes me feel. I try to look at it with a critical eye as well, but most of the time emotions win out for me. Because for me, how a book makes me feel is the most important part. Because that is what I remember, long after the plot and the specifics of the characters have fallen out of my head. The memory of how I felt while reading the book.

ONE LAST STOP made me cry. A lot. So this review will be no different.

This book is part mystery, part heist, part time-travel romance, part queer history, part journey of self discovery, and all heart. It has Casey McQuiston’s trademark snarky dialogue and loveable side characters as well as the best queer found family I’ve ever seen on the page (I wish they were all real, tbh. I love broody, in-denial Wes so much).

August has just moved to New York in search of a place where she finally fits. She’s a few classes away from finishing college, and just wants to be far enough away from Louisiana to avoid being pulled back into her mother’s all-consuming search for the brother who went missing before August was even born.

Jane is stuck. Literally. She rides the Q train end to end, all day and all night. She can’t get off. And she doesn’t know why. She also doesn’t know how she ended up in 2020 when last she remembers, she was in the 1970’s.

August and Jane meet one day on the Q when August spills coffee all over herself, and the spark between them is instantaneous. The closer they become, the more August wants to figure out the mystery of how and why Jane is stuck on the train. Feelings ensue!!!

No spoilers here, but I cried multiple times during the last couple chapters. For many reasons. Honestly, I went on a roller coaster of emotions throughout this book, but I love Jane and August SO much. Both hiding insecurities under wildly different exteriors, both pretending to have their shit together, both super adorable when they are together. Heart eyes for days.

One of my favorite things about this book is how actual, real-life queer history is folded right into the plot of the book.

Spoiler

As August and Jane work together to try to recover more and more of Jane’s memories, she remembers events she went to in the 70’s and protests she was a part of. She remembers the beginnings of the AIDS crisis and not having a name for the terrifying disease that quickly and quietly stole the lives of her friends. She remembers being arrested for wearing men’s jeans and being afraid to hold a woman’s hand in public. She remembers the UpStairs Lounge fire in New Orleans in 1973 and how devastating it was to the queer community there, while it was largely ignored by the rest of the city, and never acknowledged as a targeted attack on queer people. Jane also remembers queer hangouts in New York in the 70’s. Drag balls and lesbian bars and her own found family.

McQuiston does such a great job of painting a vivid picture of queer culture in the 70’s around the US. They also make sure to acknowledge our queer forebears and everything they did for us to be able to have the vibrant queer cultures that exist around the country today. And the fact that they weaved it so effortlessly into the plot of a romance novel is definitely noteworthy. So much of queer culture and history is lost because it is not widely taught, and because we lost a huge part of a generation of queer people to the AIDS epidemic, so to see this nod to the importance of queer history in a magical, adventurous love story is something special. I obviously don’t know the author, but I feel like this book had more of McQuiston in it than their debut. It felt more personal to me, and that really came through specifically through the exploration of Jane’s past and its ties to modern queer culture.

I am a big fan of McQuiston’s debut novel, RED, WHITE & ROYAL BLUE, and I really enjoyed this one as well. I think it’s a solid sophomore effort, and I can’t wait to see what’s next! McQuiston is an auto-buy author for me, and I’ve had this book pre-ordered since last year, so I was really pleasantly surprised to get an ARC for it as well. I definitely recommend it for the feels, for the awesome characters, and for the awesome additions of queer history!