book review › last night at the telegraph club

It has been a while since I have read a book and immediately wanted to review it because it had such a big impact on me. Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo was, thankfully one of them. For the beginning of the year, it was one of my most anticipated releases and boy, did it deliver.

Let’s dive into it!

“That book. It was about two women, and they fell in love with each other.” And then Lily asked the question that had taken root in her, that was even now unfurling its leaves and demanding to be shown the sun: “Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club.

America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.

I cannot help but mention first that this book was the first five star book for me this year, which is very fitting. If anything, I am glad that it was the first one.

It feels like a loveletter to growing up loving girls. This book is so filled with beautiful prose, but also with longing and figuring out your identity. Lily goes through a big journey through self discovery and loving herself. Figuring out that it is okay to feel the way she does, to feel brave, to step out of the mold.

This is the kind of novel that grips you on the first page, and does not let you go until the very last page.

It is a novel that hits hard, in many different ways – hits hard in the loving relationship, in the feelings for another woman, but also through trauma. It is not always an easy read. Lily goes through things that will probably stick with her for the rest of her life.

That’s the beauty of it. It’s a lesbian novel that includes a lot of the things you would expect with it being set in the 1950’s, especially merged with Lily being Asian-American. But this book is not a pity party, it is a show of just how strong people can be – or forced to be – and how much love between two girls can persevere, even if it is not the “correct” thing according to society.

Lily is a character that you immediately get transported into – you get transported into her world and feelings – her love, her disappointments, frustrations, guilt, everything.

Even if there is only one thing that you take away from this review, let it be that you should read it and pick it up. Please, do yourself that favor.

Do you have Last Night at the Telegraph Club on your tbr? Have you read it yet? Let me know in the comments down below!