Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

This book was a buddy read in the Reading Rainbow Discord group and the consensus from most of us was that we would’ve been obsessed with this book as teens. As it was, most of us liked it well enough (me included). 

As for me, I did have a Malinda Lo book back in highschool, specifically Ash, and I remember enjoying it a lot! It did a lot, specifically, for me knowing that queer books existed at all. But Last Night at the Telegraph Club was a whole other ballgame. It would’ve been amazing to read this at 16 instead of 26. 

I thought that the pacing of the book overall was very good, and enjoyed the way that it delved in various historical topics. It was both informative and interesting. At the end, though, I felt like it should’ve been two books. The first book would take up the first three quarters of the book, fleshing out Lily’ and Kath’s relationship as well as Lily’s relationship to the other girls in Chinatown, and the second book would be all the ‘after’ events of the last section, because while it was only a small part of the book it felt really rushed. There could’ve been more there, I think. 

I would definitely recommend this to any teens or young adults (especially queer teens and young adults) as a cute, engaging romance!

Now she was confused, as if she’d been reading a book that had several pages removed, but hadn’t realized the pages were gone until this moment.