One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

This 👏 Is 👏 A 👏 Science 👏 Fiction 👏 Contemporary 👏 Romance! I’ve honestly never read one and it’s just delightful. What a lovely, beautiful, everything-smells-like-pancakes-and-now-I’m-hungry love story. I’m going out for pancakes tonight.

August has moved to NYC to finish college and figure out what she wants to do with her life. Her new roommates are amazing, interesting people, who help her get a job at Pancake Billy’s House of Pancakes. On her commute she meets Jane, a woman so intriguing that August makes sure to see her on the subway as often as possible. They strike up a friendship (for August, a crush) and then one day August realizes that Jane is stuck in time on the subway; she’s from the ‘70’s. From there August does everything she can to help free Jane.

The world of this story, down to the details, is incredible and is what I’ve come to expect from Casey McQuiston. The characters either know exactly who they are or are finding themselves in the most honest and true ways. Everyone is three dimensional. The places (tiny apartments, diners, subways) are perfectly described down to the smells, scuffs, and graffiti.

I worried, going in, that there would be the pitfalls of a “time-travel” story: paradoxes and other concepts I try to ignore when my nerdiest friends are yelling about them, but because this isn’t about time-travel, but more a science fiction story plot, I was able to dispense reality from the situation and just enjoy the creativity in the writing and the relationship between August and Jane.

Another feather in Casey McQuiston’s cap, for sure. -Ford

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Casey McQuiston knocked me on my ass. I remember the Q being called the QB and as I read the reminder of that fact, I got immediately nostalgic for that summer in NY and the person I chased to Coney Island. The soft-serve flavored kisses, the sway of the train and the feeling expanding in my chest. And the heart-break, I remember the feel of my heart cracking in half to the sound of the QB rattling on the bridge.

This book was everything that summer brought to me. All the loveliness and longing, and even sadness. Gorgeous, languid, impossible feeling wrapped in a story that could only happen once.

When I cried, I did so for August and Jane, but also for me. For the me of back then. The young woman, who believed in impossible things. I cried for the current Jane and August and the current me, who still believe in impossible things.

Thank you for the book that made me cry, and love, and feel, and remember that bridge, that train, and that kiss. - Sky