One Last Stop

Romance

First published: 2021
Print length: 432 pagesSt. Martin's Griffin, 2021

Description

Cynical and guarded, August Landry moves to New York City hoping to escape both her old life and her mother’s consuming search for a missing uncle. Queer roommates and a job at a diner begin to unsettle her conviction that self-reliance is safest. Then she meets Jane on the subway and develops a crush that seems to promise an ordinary romance—until Jane reveals that she is a punk lesbian displaced from the 1970s and trapped within the transit system. Helping Jane requires August to investigate a life scattered across decades and trust her new community. The novel blends romance, mystery, and speculative time displacement into a story about chosen family, historical memory, and learning to accept connection.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Conversational · Dialogue-driven · Witty

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Hopeful · Humorous · Romantic · Warm

Structure

Linear

Focus

Character · Mystery · Relationships

Emotional intensity

3 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 2 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

BelongingCommunityFriendshipIdentityLoveMemory

About Casey McQuiston

Casey McQuiston is an American author of queer romantic comedies spanning adult and young-adult fiction. Their novels combine conversational, dialogue-driven wit with romances shaped by seemingly impossible barriers: royal protocol and political scrutiny in Red, White & Royal Blue, and time displacement on a New York subway line in One Last Stop. McQuiston places these relationships within dense queer social worlds, making friendship and chosen family central to the characters’ lives. I Kissed Shara Wheeler extends that approach to a conservative Southern religious school, using comedy and mystery to explore queer attachments to faith and place without assuming that escape is the only possible ending. McQuiston has described queer fiction as formative in their own life and their work as a way of preserving that experience for young queer readers who need it.

Red, White & Royal Blue Apple Books

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Language: English
ISBN: 9781250244499

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