A review by tangleroot_eli
Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Beautiful and heartbreaking. I love how much is going on in this book. Lily doesn't just realize she's a lesbian and fall in love. She finds queer community and starts learning the culture. She thinks about future careers. She navigates her shifting relationship with her childhood best friend. She worries about her father being deported, and about whether her being gay increases the risk of that. She tries to balance her love for her family, community, and culture of origin with her love for herself and her need to be true to her own identity. She faces her family's homophobia and the mostly white lesbian community's racism and xenophobia. Other characters have lives independent from Lily's, and sometimes there's friction where those lives overlap.

This isn't just "realizing you're gay and falling in love"; it's  "realizing you're gay and falling in love while living in a world where everything else keeps happening."
Expand filter menu Content Warnings