Excellent, brilliant - doesn't shy away from hard issues while being age-appropriate. I do take issue with the very end of the book, but it's still leagues better than most kid's books on the topic. 

I was hesitant going in because I rarely read adult genre romance and this had a lot of hype around it, but I adored this book. When I started reading, I had such a hard time putting it down. The plot was engaging and I was invested in the characters. Casey McQuiston did a really good job ballancing the reality of emotions of these different characters with the lightheartnedness that you would expect from the genre. 

The main plot was engaging, but there was a lot going on outside of the main "girl is stuck on the subway" plot that I also enjoyed. I feel like August's friends really came to life and played an important role in the book. I really loved how they worked gay history into the book as well,

particularly because the Upstairs Lounge Fire is still a lesser known piece of history. I really hope that this encourages more people to actually look into it.

I thought the main couple complimented each other very well personality-wise; they did have big parts of themselves that were different, but not to an unrealistic extent and core parts of themselves were very similar -- there's a lot of interesting stuff to unpack there. Looking at the narration, they showed August's internal struggle very well without being too heavy. While Jane is such a compelling character, I do think that it was good to focus on August's POV -- partly for plot, but partly because I think it would have been a lot harder to balance the emotion of the situation with that lightness of a romance novel.

There's a lot more that I could say, specifics I could gush about, and I could talk at length about wanting Jane Su's hand in marriage, but I think this gives you a good picture of my thoughts on the book. 

 In this memoir/analysis, Sarah Schulman is discussing what has come after the AIDS epidemic in the US, specifically exploring the role of gentrification -- both physically and mentally. She shares her memories of those she knew and discusses the ways that remembering these losses on a large scale has been suppressed, delving into the idea of gentrification and assimilationist politics. 

This was a very interesting read. I learned a fair amount about that time period and I appreciate the ways in which she describes the people she knew -- not sugar coated, but as they were to her. I liked the idea of using gentrification as a framework for understanding how people have been denied the room to mourn and I thought she did provide a lot of insight on it. I think it really fits in looking at queer vs assimilationist politics. She then goes on to also discuss art and how it has changed and become gentrified as well. She discusses the issue of not allowing art that makes people uncomfortable and also how art is being used as a medium to gentrify (such as placing palatable gays in the mainstream while refusing to fund queer creators in the margins). 

While I really liked the framework she brings to all of this, don't think it was explored enough (which I understand may be because this was intended to be more memoir than analysis, as she states in the intro). I would have loved to see colonialization being brought to into the conversation (especially since gentrification was bred from colonization and those impacted by gentrification -- both physical and ideological -- are those who have historically been colonized). I would like to see this idea explored with other groups because we can clearly see this same issue of not allowing people to mourn large scale events in other marginalized communities as well. Even within the AIDS epidemic, communities of color were heavily impacted. While she does mention people of color throughout the book, she does not look at the communities in the same way. Again, I know this is more memoir but because I really like the ideas she presented, I really would have liked to see them fleshed out more.