last night at the telegraph club thoughts

finished my 3rd book of 2024!! ok i have a lot to say about this book tbh but overall i give it a 3.5/5, rounded up to a 4 on my goodreads. the first half of the book was meh, i wasn't really feeling the main relationship like i didnt feel like it was developed as well as i wanted it to be even though like you know WHY they were placed together. it just didnt feel like there was that specific spark there yk. however, the book gets a lot better in the second half and i enjoyed it a lot even though there was more of an open ending and that's not really my thing. i feel like initially, the characters were written to be 13 years old rather than 17, since i felt like they kinda acted younger than they actually were, but maybe that's just the 1950s tbh. the multi perspective approach was interesting but it just felt out of place and irrelevant bc first off, each perspective only lasted a chapter, and second, the characters weren't really developed as well beyond that. like it was information that would've been better delivered by a flashback from lily (the main character) and not like her parents or her aunt.

however, it was a really captivating story that i actually quite enjoyed! the YA writing took a bit of time to get used to since i haven't read YA in AGES, but ultimately it's a good book thats good for who its aimed towards.