I’ve had this one on my TBR for a while, so I’m grateful to one of my friends for letting me borrow her copy! I really enjoyed reading this one, even if I brushed through it really quickly. I learned a lot about the queer community in 1950s San Francisco, and I appreciate that the author did her research and provided her bibliography for it at the back of the book. Some of the books strengths were in its reflections and commentaries of the two conflicting parts of Lily’s identity, and highlighting the struggles and strifes of being both Asian American at the height of McCarthyism in the 1950s United States, and also coming to terms with being queer at that same time as well. I wish the book could’ve gone more into the side character’s stories more in depth, as sometimes I felt their sections were only included just to provide context to Lily’s story and not stand fully on their own.

Furthermore, this is more of a critique for me but I felt like if I read this as a queer teenager I would’ve connected more with the storyline, but since I read it as an adult, there were some points where I had to remind myself that “oh yea, this is YA and meant for younger audiences” (except for that one sex scene thrown in there- that threw me off).

Overall I would recommend this to someone questioning themselves or someone in the LGBTQ+ community looking to understand the history of the community through the lens of a love story between two girls.