Reviews with content warning for Body shaming - Una última parada

Reviews tagging 'Body shaming'

Una última parada by Casey McQuiston

6 reviews

mushimushi's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

3.5

I really enjoyed a lot about this book, enough to suspend my disbelief and put up with some “too perfect” characters. I like things a little more bittersweet than the ending the author chose but I still had a good time. I do think there were some issues with the pacing, felt like there were too many ideas crowding the book which meant whole chapters that felt kind of unnecessary to the main plot and could have shaved the book down a little in page count. There are also very, slight but present body-image issue lines in here that I am not sure were necessary and not sure what they added to the character. But overall, love a time-travel rom com with a little spice ;)

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josxphinchen's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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allygator's review against another edition

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emotional funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book felt like a giant hug. I don't think Casey McQuiston has ever written a book that has protagonists and side characters I haven't loved. I felt so strongly connected to Jane and August and all the members of their beautiful queer found family.
I was a little nervous to pick this up because I love Red, White & Royal Blue so much and because I was a little scared to see how McQuiston tackled a more sci-fi heavy plot. However, this did nothing but exceed my expectations. The sci-fi elements made this book super engaging to me, and I loved trying to solve the mystery of Jane before the characters did.
I battled through a reading slump while working through this, and I think it's a testament to the quality of this book that I enjoyed every bit of it even when I struggled to pick up any sort of text. My enjoyment of this wasn't hindered by my brain being annoying.
The romance McQuiston wrote was, as always, absolutely swoon-worthy. I was so invested in whether or not Jane and August would get together and stay together that the things that I was worried about (namely: subway sex) weren't as strange as I thought that would be. My little asexual heart was not made uncomfortable by the sexy scenes :)
This is, though, a more adult book than RWRB is. The sex scenes are more explicit and don't just fade to black. Not a problem for me, but something worth noting for anyone considering picking this up.
I do think that it is important to mention that there is a line in this that has been slightly controversial in which August tells Jane that racism isn't as bad now as it was in the 70s. Some reviewers of color have brought up that this is a inaccurate and insensitive statement to make, and while I agree, I do think that the context of the scene has a lot to do with why it is said. Jane is freaking out, and August is trying to calm her down, so she says that times have changed and Jane could be herself in the present. I don't think that August was right (she's definitely very naïve and speaks from a position of incredible privilege), but I do understand why she said what she did. As a reviewer of color myself I don't have a problem with the line, but I understand why so many of my peers do, and it's not my place to judge them for that or say that they're wrong.

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rinku's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

As sad as this may be, One Last Stop showed me that contemporary romance is just not my genre since I gave the book 2.5 stars. It just bored me so much that I thought of DNFing it, and the magical aspect of the story was way too underdeveloped to keep me interested – a classical case of “it’s not you, it’s me”. The only thing I really enjoyed was how queer the story was but not much more.

The story focusses on August who moves to New York to start a new life. There, she meets Jane on public transport with whom she falls in love with instantly. She notices that Jane never leaves the train and finds out that there seems to be some magic that is keeping her there since the 1970s. We then get the big drama and an arbitrary time limit when repair work is planned at the line for which it has to be shut down and no one knows what will happen to Jane then. Here, it becomes clear for the first time that the premise doesn’t work out perfectly. Was the line not shut down since the 1970s? Were there not some repair works before?

Anyways, the rest of the plot focuses on – surprise! – the romance between Jane and August. I don’t know what to think about it honestly? I’ll have to say that because of the setting of public transport, there were many scenes that me uncomfortable like the spicy ones – some people may be into this, but I’m definitely not. In the end, I started to find them cute, but I felt not much more between them.

Besides this, we have some random family drama about the brother of August’s mom. August became kinda unlikable for me here because she’s so mean to her mother and complaining so much that she has to help her to look for her brother. I don’t know, seems a first world problem to me. She also never tries to see the things like her mom does not think about how traumatic this must be for her mom and how she tries to cope with it. This plot is solved way too conveniently because

Jane suddenly knew the brother

Another problem I had was with the writing itself. There are barely any descriptions of the subway or the surroundings. The dialogues were too try-hard funny for me and just a bit too much. I also had the feeling that many interesting aspects of the story were told and not shown. For example, I would love to see more about August’s university life. Furthermore, it is only told to us how she gets closer to her flat mates but not shown; same goes for the backstories of the characters – of course, I don’t mean flashbacks by this but there are so many interesting ways with which the backstory of a character can be shown.

Coming to the characters, I wasn’t the biggest fan of August. One of the reasons was her behaviour towards her mom, like mentioned above. She’s also one of those book characters that don’t need to study but still have amazing grades. Those people exist but they are overproportioned in fiction which sends some weird signals to people who have to study to get good grades. I didn’t like Jane so much either? She was just too extroverted for me – like I said, a “me-problem”. Just imagining her dancing through the whole tram while some people just want to go to work makes me cringe, same goes for all the characters celebrating a party there. The side characters in comparison were great, and I love how queer they were. They’re one of the reasons that I’m giving a half extra star because I got quite attached to them.

Like I’ve said in the beginning, One Last Stop is probably the right book for man people but just not for me: It was too contemporary for me and is probably already outdated in five years. Additionally, just reading about this big city life made me anxious, so yeah, not my cup of tea.

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hayleyvem's review against another edition

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funny hopeful mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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readerette's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

A light sci fi mystery and some touches of magic wrapped into a romance novel, to delightful effect. I laughed out loud regularly, felt for the characters, and couldn't put the book down. Every character was quirky, even Myla's annoying, "boring" ex, which, while amusing, felt a little forced to me--everyone has quirks, sure, but this level of eccentricity? Maybe it's a New York thing. Whatever the reason, I found it mildly distracting, but certainly not enough for me to warn people off of the novel. August is relatable, as are her friends, and her relationship with her mother. Jane's presence creates an informative contrast to the modern LGBTQIA+ experience.

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