One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston is a fun queer romantic comedy with a lot of diverse representation

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Our protagonist August is a 23-year-old student who’s been college and major-hopping for a while because she doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life once she’s done with college. That’s partly because she grew up with a mother entrenched in the past; her mother has been searching for her missing uncle (whom August was named after) for her entire life. August is plus-sized (which isn’t spelled out in the novel as such, but there are references to her having larger hips, etc) and bisexual, and just moved to New York City. She does not believe in magic.

August often takes the Q train for her daily commute and keeps running into Jane there. Jane is a butch Asian lesbian who is apparently displaced in time from the 1970s. (Not a spoiler, since this info is included in the book’s description.)

This book has a ton of queer and multicultural representation. I am a sucker for the found-family trope, which is very common in queer literature, and is a major part of this novel. August builds her found-family to include her new roommates (an electrical engineer turned sculpture artist, a bartender and part-time psychic, and a trust-fund guy in love with the drag queen across the hall) and the folks at a beloved local pancake diner where she works the night shift. I was pleased that the characters didn’t make big deals out of each others’ queer identities. For example (mild spoiler), one of the characters is trans but that information is just taken in stride as a facet of their story and not the major focus point of it.

Some other tropes in the book that I’ll list briefly for visibility but don’t want to go into due to spoilers: virgin protagonist, time-loop, soul mates, amnesia, cursed, fish out of water, new girl in town, and strangers-to-friends-to-lovers.

During a steamy scene at about the halfway point in the novel, there is a scene showcasing the importance of asking for consent in romantic and sexual relationships that I really appreciated. I’m so glad to see consent being normalized in romantic fiction lately.

All-in-all, I had a fun time reading this and teared up at several points during the novel. I listened to the audiobook, which was narrated wonderfully by Natalie Naudus.

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