Book Chat: ‘One Last Stop’ by Casey McQuiston
About the Author
Casey McQuiston is an American author of romance novels in the new adult fiction genre, best known for their New York Times best-selling debut novel Red, White & Royal Blue, in which the son of America's first female president falls in love with a prince of England, and sophomore book One Last Stop. McQuiston made their debut in the young adult fiction genre with their book I Kissed Shara Wheeler which was released on May 3, 2022. They were included in Time magazine's 2022 Time 100 Next list.
Synopsis:
One Last Stop is a 2021 LGBT romance novel written by American author Casey McQuiston. The novel is about a woman named August Landry, a cynical pseudo detective, who finds love in a woman she meets on a subway named Jane Su, a punk Lesbian from the 1970s who has been misplaced in time and is trapped on the subway.
Main Characters
August Landry is a 23-year-old college student living in New York City. Her love interest is Jane Su.
Biyu "Jane" Su is a punk lesbian displaced in her time of the 1970s who is stuck in a subway car. Her love interest is August Landry.
Niko is one of August's roommates. He is a part-time psychic medium and part-time bartender. His love interest is Myla.
Myla is one of August's roommates. She is an artist who makes art out of bones. Her love interest is Niko.
Wes is one of August's roommates. He is a tattoo artist. His love interest is Isaiah.
Minor Characters
Suzette Landry is August Landry's mother and sister to Augie Landry.
Augie Landry is an uncle to August Landry and a long-lost brother to Suzette Landry.
Isaiah is August's neighbour. He is a Drag queen who goes by the name Annie Depressant. His love interest is Wes.
Lucie works at Pancake Billy's House of Pancakes.
Jerry works as a fry cook at Pancake Billy's House of Pancakes.
***SPOILERS BELOW***
Quotes
“When you spend your whole life alone, it's incredibly appealing to move somewhere big enough to get lost in. Where being alone looks like a choice.”
“Maybe no good timing means there's no bad timing either.”
“I mean, honestly? That's wife material. Like, three kids and a dog material. If she looked at me the way she looks at you, my IUD would have shot out like a party popper.”
“Most of her records look secondhand and well-loved with no discernible organization. It’s a level of comfortable chaos that has Myla written all over it.”
“Crazy how August can imagine a whole life for this girl she doesn’t even know, but she can’t begin to picture what her own is supposed to look like.”
THEMES
Magic
August doesn’t believe in magic when One Last Stop begins. She’s eminently practical, living her life with its bare bones. However, moving to New York opens her up to many possibilities and, via Jane, impossibilities as well. From the first page, she must confront the inexplicable: a psychic—her soon-to-be roommate, Niko. Her mother, Suzette, was skeptical of psychics after a negative experience, so August steered clear. However, she needs somewhere to live. She doesn’t lend a lot of credence to Niko’s abilities, and not until she’s feeling desperate does she ask for him to use his abilities to determine whether Jane is a ghost. Seeing Niko in his element and the way that he seems to know things that he shouldn’t—coupled with the craziness of Jane’s circumstances—makes August a little more of a believer.
Electricity
Electricity is what stuck Jane on the Q, and it’s what shocks her off it. The question of how this came about permeates the novel, and August “can’t believe Jane had the nerve, the audacity, to become the one thing August can’t resist: a mystery” (113). The novel gives hints along the way that Jane is connected to electricity in some way. When she gets mad or excited, the lights on the Q flicker. When it looks like she and August can’t have sex, her energy overwhelms the train, and it stops because she overcharges it. Once August and Myla realize that Jane is attached to the electricity, the mystery seems to be solved. However, McQuiston continues to build tension after Myla shuts down the line and nothing happens to Jane. August realizes that Jane has power too, and she decides to trigger it by kissing Jane despite the danger it poses to her.
Belonging To And With People, Places, And Times
August doesn’t expect to belong to a people, place, or time. In fact, she did her best to keep her distance, not expecting to find a home in New York or with her roommates. At this point in her life, she has “lived in a dozen rooms without ever knowing how to make a space into a home, how to expand to fill it like Niko or Myla or even Wes with his drawings in the windows. She doesn’t know, really, what it would take at this point.” August realizes that “[i]t’s been twenty-three years of passing through touching brick after brick, never once feeling a permanent tug” (16). However, by the novel’s end, she reflects, “She was supposed to muddle through like she always did, bury herself in the gray. Tonight, under the neon lights of the bar, under Niko’s arm, Myla’s fingers looped through her belt loop, she barely knows that feeling’s name” (392). She realizes that she has found people who love her and support her, even beyond her romantic feelings for Jane.
Jane, too, finds herself in a liminal state, stuck on the Q without the flexibility to leave. She can’t go anywhere, and like August, she hasn’t known what a home felt like for a long time. At first, New Orleans felt like home, but once it seemed like Augie had passed away and she saw anti-gay bias run rampant in the news coverage or in priests’ approaches to addressing the arson, she decided to go to New York, where she similarly fell in love with the city. Where August becomes rooted by the people around her, at the novel’s end, Jane must wrestle with what it means to be someone from the 1970s who’s living in the 2020s. She settles into the apartment, finding comfort in both August’s friends and things that remind her of her time. As a result, she’s someone who belongs to two times, but her love for August grounds her in the 2020s.
Talking Points
One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the lack of villains or antagonists in general. August is kind of her own worst enemy as she feels alone, lacks confidence, and has no idea what to do with her life until she rooms with Niko, Myla, and Wes along with meeting Jane. Even the mystery involving Jane’s past and how to fix it doesn’t have a clear focus so it’s basically just August and Jane “researching” to reveal the latter’s backstory.
The convenience of so many events in the book falling perfectly into place at just the right time was somewhat irksome, but didn’t bother me too much. For some reason, the specific one at the end where August gets barely enough inheritance money from her grandparents to save Billy’s did, though.
The way everyone treated Gabe was surprising to me as they were so kind in general and definitely seemed unwarranted. While he certainly has issues and unfairly resents Niko, he significantly helped in both saving Billy’s and Biyu.
August deciding on wanting to be a private investigator so she can help people like she did with Biyu and Augie was lovely. She learned her skills from her mother and in the end, it was her true calling.
What did you think about One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston? Did you prefer it to Red, White & Royal Blue? Let us know in the comments below or join our discord today!
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