This book didn’t 100% work for me. It’s partly about how it was marketed - the gothic element was oversold and underdone. As was the supposed rivalry between Georgiana and Cat which was quickly dispensed with. But in general, I struggle with Vasti’s external plots which never quite make sense (to me) and feel too crowded. However, her character work is lovely and that’s true here too. It’s also Vasti’s sexiest book in my humble opinion. In general, despite my quibbles I would recommend it to anyone looking for a fun sapphic historical romance.

This book is wildly beautiful and painfully timely.

The story of After Hours at Dooryard Books unfolds in the leftist, queer subculture of NYC in 1968 - a year in which resistance to the Viet Nam war was growing, MLK Jr was assassinated, NY teachers and sanitation workers went on strike, and sex between men was still criminalized. Reading this book in January 2025 while the US military is illegally invading a foreign country and government immigration agents are gunning down people in the street felt horrendously apt.

What choices do we make when safety seems to be in conflict with solidarity? How do we hold on to - or reclaim - our values in a corrupt, white supremacist system? What are the different ways we can resist when our government is perpetrating atrocities in our name, while using its power to silence, suppress and criminalize dissent? How wide is the circle of people we will put ourselves on the line to protect? How do we expand our community, and how can we show up for them?

These are the kinds of questions Cat Sebastian asks in this book. But never fear, there's a deeply moving romance too. Yes, the romance probably gets less pagetime than in other Cat Sebastian books or in most genre romance. But I found the progression of Nathaniel and Patrick's relationship deeply compelling and satisfying; and the historical milieu was rendered so richly that the balance felt right to me.

This book is a reminder that what we are experiencing isn’t new. What we are seeing in the streets of Minneapolis or Caracas or Gaza City is "just" the newest iteration of systems and playbooks of oppression that many people in the US and abroad have endured for centuries. It's intensely poignant and hopeful, somehow, while never pretending that progress is easy or linear. Sebastian refuses to feed the reader the fiction that there is a shortcut around the hard work of making amends and building community.

Looking back, many historians see 1968 as somewhat of an inflection point in American history. The Stonewall riots happened the next year. The tide was turning. But - as Sebastain writes in her author's note - for people living and resisting through 1968, it mostly just felt like a slog. Certainly, many felt hopeless. We know that feeling. May we keep living and loving and resisting, and look back and see THIS year as a turning point.