I was gifted this book by the fabulous @teresaelectro as part of the 2022 CBR Book exchange. Thank you very much for the books, teresaelectro!
August is a 23 year old just trying to figure out her own place in the world. She has just moved to New York City to attend what feels like her fourth college. She’s finally free from her mother and her mother’s obsession with finding out what happened to her brother. August no longer has to act as an accomplice as her moonlights as an amateur detective. She’s on her own! But what does that mean? August is hoping that NYC is just the city to figure that out.
She finds an apartment with some other 20-something artist types and gets a part time job at a local dive-y diner. She’s living the stereotypical poor NYC student dream. She even has a little meet-cute with Jane, another 20-something year old who is radiant. She’s confident, she’s different, and she completely alters the trajectory of August’s life. August, very quickly, falls head over heels for Jane. The only issue is that Jane can’t really remember who she is or where she came from (there’s a little more to this, but I don’t want to ruin the reveal). August makes it her mission to help Jane re-discover her past and life.
The Jane/August story line is cute. I liked it. I wish that had been the entire book because Jane and August are phenomenal characters. Instead, we got a pretty bloated plot. There’s August’s Mom’s hunt for her brother. There’s a b-plot love story between August’s roommate and the drag queen across the hall. There’s a fight to save the diner from being sold to a developer. Oh, and also most of these story lines are somehow connected. There’s just a lot! And I didn’t feel like all of it was necessary.
I will applaud the LGBTQIA+ representation. There are drag queens, trans characters, bisexual and gay characters, and everyone just gets to live without their story focusing on the trauma of being queer.
Read Harder Challenge #16: Read a book with bisexual representation
CBR Passport Challenge #1: Recommended by a friend
