Lydia Gates's Blog
January 2, 2023
Top 10 Most Disappointing Reads of 2022
This is a transcript of this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/DKI06QUalqQ
I’m Liddi, and welcome to the first ever full length video on my channel! You might know me from TikTok as Manic Changeling, where I post short form content about my experience as a queer autistic person, but I’ve wanted to branch out for a while now, so I’m shooting my shot! I hope to post content about books, performance poetry, jigsaw puzzles, and crochet along with more in depth videos about autism and queer identity as well.
Today, we have the top 10 most disappointing books that I read in 2022. I want to provide a quick disclaimer that I will only be talking about traditionally published books, and there will be spoilers. Unfortunately, there were some really popular books that disappointed me this year, and I think that, in the spirit of reviews being for readers, I will tell you what I wish I had known before I picked up these books!
I did read over 200 books this year, and most of them were really good! But that’s not what you’re here for, so…
Number 10: Legendborn - This book follows Bree, who is navigating the grief of losing her mother while having a school experience that truly highlights the institutional racism of academia and how the world does not treat Black people fairly. Those are the best parts of the book, especially when she makes decisions that the reader sees are a bad idea, but you understand why a hurting 16-year-old would do that.
Legendborn’s fantasy has its roots in Arthurian legend, which is a source material that has been done well–and not so well–many times before. Even with my knowledge of those legends, I had an incredibly hard time following the worldbuilding, which was often delivered in dry, boring infodumps or villain monologues. I will admit that I did come close to calling this a DNF around 30%, and I saw in reviews that others found that section especially challenging as well, but I am glad I finished the book because the second half was better.
This book also falls back on some of my least favorite YA tropes, like insta-love triangle with stock archetypes as potential love interests, a book set at school where they never really go to school, and characters with no prior training learning difficult martial arts without much effort.
Number 9: The Cruel Prince - Who didn’t feel a secret thrill thinking they might be a changeling while reading Tithe in middle school? I’m sure my nostalgia is clouding my recollection of that one, as this book disappointed me pretty thoroughly. This world had an interesting Faerie court full of tricky and corrupt characters, befitting the Grimm approach Black usually favors, but it did lack in actual worldbuilding beyond politics.
The problem is there was literally no one to root for in this story. Jude starts out as a character you want to get behind, but she pretty quickly buries all your goodwill by going against her characterization and falling in insta-love with a boy who treats her like crap. Another big problem with her is having someone young (even for a human, let alone a Faerie) with this characterization be able to outsmart and play mind games with the fae. I just didn’t believe it. Her twin is an absolute menace, her father figure is a murderer, and the other characters are just kind of flat.
This is a book where if you like enemies-to-lovers and similar YA tropes, it’ll be a win for you, but I think I just might be getting tired of the more formulaic stories, especially if they lack any kind of diversity in the characters.
Number 8: Delilah Green Doesn’t Care - A sapphic novel I was super excited for, but the title is pretty apt. I don’t care about Delilah Green. We’re supposed to sympathize with her because of the way the other characters treated her in the past, but she’s definitely turned around and become a bully herself. In fact, all the characters are bullies who acted like they were in their early 20s, not around 30. Due to my dislike of the female characters, I was rooting for the love interest’s ex-husband about two-thirds of the way through the book, which means it failed as a romance, especially a sapphic one.
We’re supposed to think Claire was the nice one who just stood on the sidelines of past bullying, but I think her parenting reveals some deeper truths about her as a person. She is severely controlling and smothering, even in situations with no danger, and it is really doing a number on her relationship with her daughter. In fact, the girl attaches herself to Delilah almost immediately, hoping for another chance at being respected as a person with autonomy.
I actually quite enjoyed having a younger character in the book and would be interested in more stories with kids who are old enough to participate in the plot. Delilah also had a lot of interesting things to say about the craft of photography, especially through a queer lens. Many people are enjoying the book and more power to them, but I think I might actually be a little upset by the similarity of these mean girls to people I knew in college.
Number 7: The Witch King - I was very excited to pick up another book with a trans-masc main character after I enjoyed Cemetary Boys quite a bit. Unfortunately, while this book seems like it was very healing for the author to write, it didn’t really translate into the best reading experience.
I don’t mind self-deprecating queer jokes or dark humor about mental illness, but there is a point where characters truly acting like teenagers (especially ones who were teens when I was a teen in the mid-aughts) is going to get grating. Wyatt was honestly too believable, in that way teachers say those who will teach middle school are the strongest among them because those kids are all impulses and no control.
The first person narration of the book is written in the voice of this teen as well, where every allegory, symbol, theme, and reveal was just thrust into your face and overexplained in a “see what I did?” kind of way. The book also suffers from poor pacing because the focus of the story turns around the main character and what he is doing, not what is happening in the plot around him. It’s possible he is an unreliable narrator, or just doesn’t understand the worldbuilding in his own story, but there was quite a bit of confusion on that front.
I think that Emyr, the love interest, is getting a raw deal, as he genuinely seems loving toward Wyatt. If you’re looking for some jaded queer catharsis, you might like watching the world burn in this one.
Number 6: Akata Witch - I made the active choice to diversify my reading this year, and after wins like Raybearer I was excited for more African-inspired fantasy stories.
Unfortunately, what I got was a lot of devices that sounded suspiciously like Harry Potter. There were a few unique elements and I know that magic school plots will have some similarities, but I noticed: the “wand” choosing the wizard on a secret wizard alley shopping trip; the “knight bus” that comes exactly where it is needed and takes you exactly where you would like to go, changing appearance and traveling in impossible, magical ways; abusive parents you have to hide your magic from and keep going back to; a “ministry of magic” that instantly knows if you break rules or reveal magic to “muggles” and comes and gets you for punishment; and a “World Cup” style sporting event or gathering in secret where something horrible happens. There is also the general theme of young children (the characters are around 12 in this book) being relied on by adults to do their job in solving problems, and potentially be sacrificed to save the world.
There was an attempt to do something interesting with disability representation here, in that the story states that disability makes magic stronger and you should celebrate it. However, the magic also cures the disabilities (in this case albinism sun sensitivity and dyslexia) once the main characters accept it, which seems to contradict that message. If you’re looking for Harry Potter vibes and don’t want to support its author, this might give you some of the nostalgia you were looking for.
Number 5: The Traitor Baru Cormorant - There are two DNFs on this list, and this is one of them. You may say that I can’t critique a book I didn’t finish, but I did check out spoilers and I’m honestly glad I stopped when I did. The problem with this book is I kept seeing it make lists of sapphic reads, and I generally love fantasy, but it was not the right book for me.
It turns out that I don’t like political fantasy that is in a lot of ways a tutorial on how to manage an empire’s account books, and the narration feels very disconnected from the characters when I like to know about what they’re feeling. Perhaps, though, the problem with the second gripe there is Baru doesn’t have many feelings. I have no idea if this was intentional, but to me, she embodies every negative stereotype of autistic men. Unfortunately, we get that along with intense homophobia in colonizing empire’s culture, and that homophobia is inexplicably based on history and religious texts (including the use of the word sodomite) that do not exist in this high fantasy world.
In the end, if you like political fantasy, you might enjoy this book, but don’t go into it thinking it’s like the other sapphic recs it gets paired with on BookTok.
Number 4: Harrow the Ninth - And now, I’m serving you my second DNF, though this one was at 82%. You may ask why I didn’t just finish it, but I had been pushing myself immensely to get that far and I just couldn’t keep going. This is also the only true sequel on this list, and it was disappointing because I enjoyed Gideon overall.
Unfortunately, what sold Gideon the Ninth was Gideon herself: irreverent, snarky, and full of spunk. Harrow is not Gideon. Harrow is a nasty (literally, as far as her necromancy goes) little mind-fucker who I never want to talk to again. I’ve read confusing books, but in my confusion, I was having a stellar time with fun characters and imaginative worlds. This book was just an exercise in gaslighting and the story being told did not make up for that. The weak parts of Gideon were not addressed. While this book does have a bit more sci-fi in it, where I didn’t think Gideon really deserved to be called sci-fi at all, it truly leaned into the fanfic of it all. The worldbuilding completely falls apart with all references to modern culture. I will admit, it was the “none pizza with left beef” joke that truly broke me because that joke is explicitly specific to Tumblr.
I know who this book is for, and those people loved it. Good for them! I just ask that if you want to write a bunch of niche in-jokes, you set your book in a world where those jokes could actually exist.
–
Alright, we’re on to the top three. You will notice that on the rest of the list I acknowledged that these books have an audience out there, it just might not have been me. The top three, though, disappointed me in ways I find pretty irredeemable. No hate to the authors, but I would recommend these last three books to no one. If you loved these books, though, I’m happy for you! The joy of reading is that we all have different tastes.
Number 3: Out There - A collection of speculative short stories, where “speculative” means the future will be a joyless existence or a place where all happiness comes to tragedy. The reason I tried this book is because it sounded exactly like my brand of weird.
The main reason I finished this book is because I kept hoping the next story would show me something new, but it turns out there is one trick in this book, and it’s internalized misogyny by all the female characters and overt misogyny by all the male ones. Pretty much all the female leads in the stories were facets of the same character who I found to be pitiful, spiteful, jealous, and unwilling to understand why people might seek meaningful relationships with others.
One example of this is the story The Bone Ward, which was described as a love triangle story in the synopsis. It was actually the story of a woman self-harming for attention, and then, when that didn’t work, committing heinous violence against a perceived rival for the crime of befriending a man she felt was her possession. She is then killed by the other characters in the story, and in fact, many women die in these stories, often while being dehumanized by both the other characters and the narrative. There is also a lot of really unappealing sex that is uncomfortable to read because it feels like the women are being put through it to make them suffer.
Unfortunately, the stories I found most intriguing in their premise were often the shortest or really didn’t come to any particular conclusion. That might be the atmosphere the book was going for–existential dread–but it didn’t make for an enjoyable reading experience in any way, and I don’t think that what I felt or took away from it was valuable.
Number 2: These Witches Don’t Burn - The cute cover of this book hides the absolutely wild content, and I would consider it false advertising. The characters act as if they are in a usual lighthearted YA book while the narrative makes it clear they are in true, terrifying danger.
The main character Hannah is forced to try and solve the book’s mystery with her emotionally abusive ex-girlfriend and it quickly devolves into–as a list of content warnings–nonconsensual kissing, animal sacrifice, police detention and interrogation, arson, near death experiences (including being sliced open with glass, drowning, smoke inhalation, being burned alive, being shot, and magical poison), there is also multiple hospital stays for various characters, direct attempted murder with a vehicle accident, and actual murder and death of Hannah’s father, which is not even emotionally impactful because their relationship was not developed.
Despite all this, they just keep running into danger and getting failed by any adult in their life who should be seeing their struggle and helping them, especially since we are told Hannah’s parents are a teacher and a lawyer. There are various points where adults intervene just to chastise the characters. While I can see that narrative working in a regular YA book, when your kids repeatedly almost literally die, that would not be the average parent’s reaction.
This book uses tired tropes such as “we can’t reveal witches to the world,” “hunters want to cleanse the world of witches because they have power,” and “blood witches are evil.” This is while we are told Wiccan practice actually has real power and regular humans can do magic with it, but the witch hunters don’t care about that? This was a major plot hole to me. The book is set in Salem but doesn’t acknowledge basic information about the Salem witch trials, probably because getting burned alive is more dramatic.
The final nail in the coffin is that the synopsis of the sequel seems like they’re just going to do it all again with even higher stakes, showing that no one in this world has learned a damn thing.
And finally,
Number 1: A Scatter of Light - This ranks at number one because it was the book that my expectations were the highest for, and it disappointed me the most. Though not a sequel, this is a companion to one of my absolute favorite books of the year, Last Night at the Telegraph Club. The reason I finished this book is because I was promised an update about those characters, but it was not worth it.
Do not go into this book thinking it is anything like Last Night at the Telegraph Club. It is not a book exploring queer history. There is background mention of the legal decisions in 2013 that lead to marriage equality in California, but that is about it. During the few queer community events the main character Aria attends it doesn’t seem like she has any understanding of what’s going on or why it’s important. The synopsis mentions the working-class queer community, and Aria is basically taking a privileged cultural tour through it, being disgusted by things like an average cheap apartment that seems to be otherwise clean. I also found the writing to be very procedural and lacking depth or description.
The book is not a romance. In fact, the true villain here is the cheating storyline. Lisa, the woman being cheated on, is clearly not the right partner for the love interest Steph and is even portrayed with a stereotypically snotty voice in the audiobook so we’ll think it’s okay that they cheat on her, I guess? There is no reason they couldn’t have broken up before Aria and Steph got together and made this story infinitely better.
Aria and Steph are unrepentant in their cheating, no matter who it harms. They even hook up in Aria’s grandmother’s house the day the woman goes into the hospital for a stroke, because they are excited to have that space to themselves. They eventually (rightfully) get caught cheating, because they kiss in a public place Lisa frequents. Steph does seem to have a redemption arc off-screen, but Aria learns nothing from this and spends the rest of the book trying to get Steph to take her back. The epilogue is quite strange; it’s just Aria back in her upper-class world reflecting a bit on the events of the book without taking accountability. I’m honestly not even sure she came out as queer after she destructively sampled what the community had to offer.
Honestly, it feels like this book and Last Night at the Telegraph Club were written by entirely different people.
–
There you have it. I’m excited to make a video about my favorite books of 2022, so look out for that coming soon! If you want to take a chance on a new channel I hope you’ll subscribe and leave a like or a comment, and I’ll see you next time!
I’m Liddi, and welcome to the first ever full length video on my channel! You might know me from TikTok as Manic Changeling, where I post short form content about my experience as a queer autistic person, but I’ve wanted to branch out for a while now, so I’m shooting my shot! I hope to post content about books, performance poetry, jigsaw puzzles, and crochet along with more in depth videos about autism and queer identity as well.
Today, we have the top 10 most disappointing books that I read in 2022. I want to provide a quick disclaimer that I will only be talking about traditionally published books, and there will be spoilers. Unfortunately, there were some really popular books that disappointed me this year, and I think that, in the spirit of reviews being for readers, I will tell you what I wish I had known before I picked up these books!
I did read over 200 books this year, and most of them were really good! But that’s not what you’re here for, so…
Number 10: Legendborn - This book follows Bree, who is navigating the grief of losing her mother while having a school experience that truly highlights the institutional racism of academia and how the world does not treat Black people fairly. Those are the best parts of the book, especially when she makes decisions that the reader sees are a bad idea, but you understand why a hurting 16-year-old would do that.
Legendborn’s fantasy has its roots in Arthurian legend, which is a source material that has been done well–and not so well–many times before. Even with my knowledge of those legends, I had an incredibly hard time following the worldbuilding, which was often delivered in dry, boring infodumps or villain monologues. I will admit that I did come close to calling this a DNF around 30%, and I saw in reviews that others found that section especially challenging as well, but I am glad I finished the book because the second half was better.
This book also falls back on some of my least favorite YA tropes, like insta-love triangle with stock archetypes as potential love interests, a book set at school where they never really go to school, and characters with no prior training learning difficult martial arts without much effort.
Number 9: The Cruel Prince - Who didn’t feel a secret thrill thinking they might be a changeling while reading Tithe in middle school? I’m sure my nostalgia is clouding my recollection of that one, as this book disappointed me pretty thoroughly. This world had an interesting Faerie court full of tricky and corrupt characters, befitting the Grimm approach Black usually favors, but it did lack in actual worldbuilding beyond politics.
The problem is there was literally no one to root for in this story. Jude starts out as a character you want to get behind, but she pretty quickly buries all your goodwill by going against her characterization and falling in insta-love with a boy who treats her like crap. Another big problem with her is having someone young (even for a human, let alone a Faerie) with this characterization be able to outsmart and play mind games with the fae. I just didn’t believe it. Her twin is an absolute menace, her father figure is a murderer, and the other characters are just kind of flat.
This is a book where if you like enemies-to-lovers and similar YA tropes, it’ll be a win for you, but I think I just might be getting tired of the more formulaic stories, especially if they lack any kind of diversity in the characters.
Number 8: Delilah Green Doesn’t Care - A sapphic novel I was super excited for, but the title is pretty apt. I don’t care about Delilah Green. We’re supposed to sympathize with her because of the way the other characters treated her in the past, but she’s definitely turned around and become a bully herself. In fact, all the characters are bullies who acted like they were in their early 20s, not around 30. Due to my dislike of the female characters, I was rooting for the love interest’s ex-husband about two-thirds of the way through the book, which means it failed as a romance, especially a sapphic one.
We’re supposed to think Claire was the nice one who just stood on the sidelines of past bullying, but I think her parenting reveals some deeper truths about her as a person. She is severely controlling and smothering, even in situations with no danger, and it is really doing a number on her relationship with her daughter. In fact, the girl attaches herself to Delilah almost immediately, hoping for another chance at being respected as a person with autonomy.
I actually quite enjoyed having a younger character in the book and would be interested in more stories with kids who are old enough to participate in the plot. Delilah also had a lot of interesting things to say about the craft of photography, especially through a queer lens. Many people are enjoying the book and more power to them, but I think I might actually be a little upset by the similarity of these mean girls to people I knew in college.
Number 7: The Witch King - I was very excited to pick up another book with a trans-masc main character after I enjoyed Cemetary Boys quite a bit. Unfortunately, while this book seems like it was very healing for the author to write, it didn’t really translate into the best reading experience.
I don’t mind self-deprecating queer jokes or dark humor about mental illness, but there is a point where characters truly acting like teenagers (especially ones who were teens when I was a teen in the mid-aughts) is going to get grating. Wyatt was honestly too believable, in that way teachers say those who will teach middle school are the strongest among them because those kids are all impulses and no control.
The first person narration of the book is written in the voice of this teen as well, where every allegory, symbol, theme, and reveal was just thrust into your face and overexplained in a “see what I did?” kind of way. The book also suffers from poor pacing because the focus of the story turns around the main character and what he is doing, not what is happening in the plot around him. It’s possible he is an unreliable narrator, or just doesn’t understand the worldbuilding in his own story, but there was quite a bit of confusion on that front.
I think that Emyr, the love interest, is getting a raw deal, as he genuinely seems loving toward Wyatt. If you’re looking for some jaded queer catharsis, you might like watching the world burn in this one.
Number 6: Akata Witch - I made the active choice to diversify my reading this year, and after wins like Raybearer I was excited for more African-inspired fantasy stories.
Unfortunately, what I got was a lot of devices that sounded suspiciously like Harry Potter. There were a few unique elements and I know that magic school plots will have some similarities, but I noticed: the “wand” choosing the wizard on a secret wizard alley shopping trip; the “knight bus” that comes exactly where it is needed and takes you exactly where you would like to go, changing appearance and traveling in impossible, magical ways; abusive parents you have to hide your magic from and keep going back to; a “ministry of magic” that instantly knows if you break rules or reveal magic to “muggles” and comes and gets you for punishment; and a “World Cup” style sporting event or gathering in secret where something horrible happens. There is also the general theme of young children (the characters are around 12 in this book) being relied on by adults to do their job in solving problems, and potentially be sacrificed to save the world.
There was an attempt to do something interesting with disability representation here, in that the story states that disability makes magic stronger and you should celebrate it. However, the magic also cures the disabilities (in this case albinism sun sensitivity and dyslexia) once the main characters accept it, which seems to contradict that message. If you’re looking for Harry Potter vibes and don’t want to support its author, this might give you some of the nostalgia you were looking for.
Number 5: The Traitor Baru Cormorant - There are two DNFs on this list, and this is one of them. You may say that I can’t critique a book I didn’t finish, but I did check out spoilers and I’m honestly glad I stopped when I did. The problem with this book is I kept seeing it make lists of sapphic reads, and I generally love fantasy, but it was not the right book for me.
It turns out that I don’t like political fantasy that is in a lot of ways a tutorial on how to manage an empire’s account books, and the narration feels very disconnected from the characters when I like to know about what they’re feeling. Perhaps, though, the problem with the second gripe there is Baru doesn’t have many feelings. I have no idea if this was intentional, but to me, she embodies every negative stereotype of autistic men. Unfortunately, we get that along with intense homophobia in colonizing empire’s culture, and that homophobia is inexplicably based on history and religious texts (including the use of the word sodomite) that do not exist in this high fantasy world.
In the end, if you like political fantasy, you might enjoy this book, but don’t go into it thinking it’s like the other sapphic recs it gets paired with on BookTok.
Number 4: Harrow the Ninth - And now, I’m serving you my second DNF, though this one was at 82%. You may ask why I didn’t just finish it, but I had been pushing myself immensely to get that far and I just couldn’t keep going. This is also the only true sequel on this list, and it was disappointing because I enjoyed Gideon overall.
Unfortunately, what sold Gideon the Ninth was Gideon herself: irreverent, snarky, and full of spunk. Harrow is not Gideon. Harrow is a nasty (literally, as far as her necromancy goes) little mind-fucker who I never want to talk to again. I’ve read confusing books, but in my confusion, I was having a stellar time with fun characters and imaginative worlds. This book was just an exercise in gaslighting and the story being told did not make up for that. The weak parts of Gideon were not addressed. While this book does have a bit more sci-fi in it, where I didn’t think Gideon really deserved to be called sci-fi at all, it truly leaned into the fanfic of it all. The worldbuilding completely falls apart with all references to modern culture. I will admit, it was the “none pizza with left beef” joke that truly broke me because that joke is explicitly specific to Tumblr.
I know who this book is for, and those people loved it. Good for them! I just ask that if you want to write a bunch of niche in-jokes, you set your book in a world where those jokes could actually exist.
–
Alright, we’re on to the top three. You will notice that on the rest of the list I acknowledged that these books have an audience out there, it just might not have been me. The top three, though, disappointed me in ways I find pretty irredeemable. No hate to the authors, but I would recommend these last three books to no one. If you loved these books, though, I’m happy for you! The joy of reading is that we all have different tastes.
Number 3: Out There - A collection of speculative short stories, where “speculative” means the future will be a joyless existence or a place where all happiness comes to tragedy. The reason I tried this book is because it sounded exactly like my brand of weird.
The main reason I finished this book is because I kept hoping the next story would show me something new, but it turns out there is one trick in this book, and it’s internalized misogyny by all the female characters and overt misogyny by all the male ones. Pretty much all the female leads in the stories were facets of the same character who I found to be pitiful, spiteful, jealous, and unwilling to understand why people might seek meaningful relationships with others.
One example of this is the story The Bone Ward, which was described as a love triangle story in the synopsis. It was actually the story of a woman self-harming for attention, and then, when that didn’t work, committing heinous violence against a perceived rival for the crime of befriending a man she felt was her possession. She is then killed by the other characters in the story, and in fact, many women die in these stories, often while being dehumanized by both the other characters and the narrative. There is also a lot of really unappealing sex that is uncomfortable to read because it feels like the women are being put through it to make them suffer.
Unfortunately, the stories I found most intriguing in their premise were often the shortest or really didn’t come to any particular conclusion. That might be the atmosphere the book was going for–existential dread–but it didn’t make for an enjoyable reading experience in any way, and I don’t think that what I felt or took away from it was valuable.
Number 2: These Witches Don’t Burn - The cute cover of this book hides the absolutely wild content, and I would consider it false advertising. The characters act as if they are in a usual lighthearted YA book while the narrative makes it clear they are in true, terrifying danger.
The main character Hannah is forced to try and solve the book’s mystery with her emotionally abusive ex-girlfriend and it quickly devolves into–as a list of content warnings–nonconsensual kissing, animal sacrifice, police detention and interrogation, arson, near death experiences (including being sliced open with glass, drowning, smoke inhalation, being burned alive, being shot, and magical poison), there is also multiple hospital stays for various characters, direct attempted murder with a vehicle accident, and actual murder and death of Hannah’s father, which is not even emotionally impactful because their relationship was not developed.
Despite all this, they just keep running into danger and getting failed by any adult in their life who should be seeing their struggle and helping them, especially since we are told Hannah’s parents are a teacher and a lawyer. There are various points where adults intervene just to chastise the characters. While I can see that narrative working in a regular YA book, when your kids repeatedly almost literally die, that would not be the average parent’s reaction.
This book uses tired tropes such as “we can’t reveal witches to the world,” “hunters want to cleanse the world of witches because they have power,” and “blood witches are evil.” This is while we are told Wiccan practice actually has real power and regular humans can do magic with it, but the witch hunters don’t care about that? This was a major plot hole to me. The book is set in Salem but doesn’t acknowledge basic information about the Salem witch trials, probably because getting burned alive is more dramatic.
The final nail in the coffin is that the synopsis of the sequel seems like they’re just going to do it all again with even higher stakes, showing that no one in this world has learned a damn thing.
And finally,
Number 1: A Scatter of Light - This ranks at number one because it was the book that my expectations were the highest for, and it disappointed me the most. Though not a sequel, this is a companion to one of my absolute favorite books of the year, Last Night at the Telegraph Club. The reason I finished this book is because I was promised an update about those characters, but it was not worth it.
Do not go into this book thinking it is anything like Last Night at the Telegraph Club. It is not a book exploring queer history. There is background mention of the legal decisions in 2013 that lead to marriage equality in California, but that is about it. During the few queer community events the main character Aria attends it doesn’t seem like she has any understanding of what’s going on or why it’s important. The synopsis mentions the working-class queer community, and Aria is basically taking a privileged cultural tour through it, being disgusted by things like an average cheap apartment that seems to be otherwise clean. I also found the writing to be very procedural and lacking depth or description.
The book is not a romance. In fact, the true villain here is the cheating storyline. Lisa, the woman being cheated on, is clearly not the right partner for the love interest Steph and is even portrayed with a stereotypically snotty voice in the audiobook so we’ll think it’s okay that they cheat on her, I guess? There is no reason they couldn’t have broken up before Aria and Steph got together and made this story infinitely better.
Aria and Steph are unrepentant in their cheating, no matter who it harms. They even hook up in Aria’s grandmother’s house the day the woman goes into the hospital for a stroke, because they are excited to have that space to themselves. They eventually (rightfully) get caught cheating, because they kiss in a public place Lisa frequents. Steph does seem to have a redemption arc off-screen, but Aria learns nothing from this and spends the rest of the book trying to get Steph to take her back. The epilogue is quite strange; it’s just Aria back in her upper-class world reflecting a bit on the events of the book without taking accountability. I’m honestly not even sure she came out as queer after she destructively sampled what the community had to offer.
Honestly, it feels like this book and Last Night at the Telegraph Club were written by entirely different people.
–
There you have it. I’m excited to make a video about my favorite books of 2022, so look out for that coming soon! If you want to take a chance on a new channel I hope you’ll subscribe and leave a like or a comment, and I’ll see you next time!
