Scan barcode
A review by juliamikhno
Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
4.0
4 ⭐️ adored this book! 1950s lesbian culture, a coming of age story of a chinese american teenage girl discovering and coming to terms with her sexuality, a delightful slow-burn romance?? sign me Up!!
i was already here for the setting and the vibes and the self discovery and lily and kath’s adorable interactions, but then the story really picked up the pace in the back third and had me speeding through the rest of it. which i Loved, although it did end abruptly and (even though the book is already 400 pages) i am so curious about some plot lines that we didn’t get any concrete conclusions for. cannot believe that i’m saying that a historical fiction novel needs to be longer than 400 pages but i was so invested in every little plot point. but besides that, the epilogue was a satisfying conclusion to the story. i do wish we got a little more of a true happily ever after, but i’ll gladly take the epilogue.
lily’s inner monologue was just so relatable to me as a queer person, and it made me feel validated and seen. i loved following her journey so much. her and kath are so very dear to me <3
i wasn’t the biggest fan of the flashbacks because they seemed to have little effect on the plot and were too brief and scattered to truly make me Feel anything even though they did touch on really heavy topics. but they did a good job of educating the readers on the cultural and political issues of the time. overall, i feel like like malinda lo did a fantastic job of immersing us into the 1950s san francisco. definitely going to be thinking about this story for a long long time.
i was already here for the setting and the vibes and the self discovery and lily and kath’s adorable interactions, but then the story really picked up the pace in the back third and had me speeding through the rest of it. which i Loved, although it did end abruptly and (even though the book is already 400 pages) i am so curious about some plot lines that we didn’t get any concrete conclusions for. cannot believe that i’m saying that a historical fiction novel needs to be longer than 400 pages but i was so invested in every little plot point. but besides that, the epilogue was a satisfying conclusion to the story. i do wish we got a little more of a true happily ever after, but i’ll gladly take the epilogue.
lily’s inner monologue was just so relatable to me as a queer person, and it made me feel validated and seen. i loved following her journey so much. her and kath are so very dear to me <3
i wasn’t the biggest fan of the flashbacks because they seemed to have little effect on the plot and were too brief and scattered to truly make me Feel anything even though they did touch on really heavy topics. but they did a good job of educating the readers on the cultural and political issues of the time. overall, i feel like like malinda lo did a fantastic job of immersing us into the 1950s san francisco. definitely going to be thinking about this story for a long long time.