Chloe McDermott

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston is a sapphic romance book where the main character August meets a mysterious stranger called Jane on the New York subway. As she begins to fall in love with her, she also figures out she is not ever off the subway. She is stuck there and displaced from her time. Therefore, she must help unravel the mystery and figure out way of getting her unstuck from the subway.

The book does certain things well. The first few chapters where we meet August and the writer introduces us to her background and how she keeps moving from one city to the next and changing what major she wants to study etc. We delve into her headspace as a 23-year-old trying to find her own identity. We are introduced to this by exploring her relationship with her mother and how it is strained due to her mother’s obsession with trying to find out what happened to her older brother ‘Augie’. It is through this explanation that we establish August’s motivation for making a move to New York and yet again changing what she studies in university as her relationship with her mother feels more like private investigators cracking a case than a healthy parent/child relationship. The writer can show promise in these early chapters that she can understand how to delve into a character and understanding their motivations. In the beginning I was prepared to enjoy a light-hearted and easy-going romance. I was hoping this would be a fast paced, funny and heartfelt story.

When the plot begins to pick up around the middle however my ability to continue felt less like an activity of leisure but of endurance. I felt strongly that a lot of what was being thrown on to the pages could’ve been cut. I write this now and forget a lot of what happened in the middle. By the time we reach the last third of the book McQuiston starts adding in intertwining subplots into the book that get increasingly convoluted. Each one stretching my enjoyment and suspension of disbelief. Time that could have been used more to further explore Jane and her backstory. By the time we get to the end of the book I was left unsatisfied with they the majority of these plots wrapped up.

I think another major problem with this book that results in it feeling overstuffed is the ‘found family’ trope also being used to include a lot of side characters that end up feeling very one note. Often not doing all that much to serve the plot until the very end. The characters she rents a flat with, the ones she works with, and her neighbours all fill up space in this book. I don’t find the majority of them that interesting or charming. We get very basic descriptions of these characters and what ‘box’ they fit into and not much more. Like Myla is into science and Niko is a Psychic etc. Whatever interaction they have seems to come back to that core personality trait. After a while I began to dislike being with these characters too long because I simply found them boring.

The pacing, plot and character issues all fall under the same umbrella. A lack of focus and editing. There’s a decision this writer needed to make and that was what THE plot should be. If they could remain focused on telling us the story of August and Jane falling in love and getting Jane unstuck from the subway. We could have had a book filled with fun flirty banter, cohesive character study of two queer women from different time periods and sci-fi time shenanigans. Instead, we got an overly long romance that didn’t need a convoluted mystery or fundraising to save ‘x’ plot tacked on to the side. If we had a book that focused on August and Jane, it could have even solved another gripe I had with the book. August often annoyingly escapes consequences for things that in reality would definitely have consequences. Now, I am not saying that books always have to perfectly reflect reality but specifically in this book the consequences of missing university and skiving work could have been interesting. For example, she has to choose between solving this mystery/falling in love with Jane who is stuck on the subway and going to university. She gets told they can’t keep her on at work because she keeps calling in sick. Not being able to earn money and thus pay rent or pay to go on the subway should be in itself an interesting plot point. It could have provided a moment of character growth.

In conclusion, brevity is the soul of wit, and this book is one hundred pages too long. Or in other words this love story could’ve been an email.