Anyone who knows me knows I stan Casey McQuiston and would devour anything she publishes but One Last Stop missed the mark for me.

Let's start with what I liked, August Landry was the quintessential Casey McQuiston main character- killer inner monologues, burning desire to belong, and seriously lacking in social skills with a preference towards a more introverted lifestyle. I haven't read many characters described as "A bootleg Veronica Mars with the social skills of a pringles can" but anyone who places their trust in fried chicken before people is ok in my books.

Augusts' entire life has been focused on searching for the truth behind the mystery and she may have just met the ultimate case in Jane, the hot lesbian ghost currently residing on the subway. Casey McQuiston is a genius at writing perfectly imperfect characters that tug at your heartstrings and make you want to fall in love.

Casey's ability to weave friendships between characters who are singularly unique into a happy band of misfits through the bonds of friendship is unparalleled. I particularly enjoyed this description, “The thing about Nyla is that she doesn’t plant a seed a friendship and tend to it with gentle watering and sunlight. She drops into your life, fully formed, and just is. A friend in completion.”

One Last Stop is a great example of how exemplary Casey McQuiston is at making readers emotional. There is something honest and almost poetic about her words that demand to be felt.

Only Casey McQuiston can make a pancake house seem magical with her remarkable ability to associate places with emotions. I love how she cultivates the belief that places can have memories and can mean different things to different persons. Places may disappear, but they cannot truly ever be replaced.

Let's talk about where it went a bit sideways for me.

I don't know if I felt old reading this, but for some reason, the descriptions, dilemmas, and general awkwardness in social situations felt so foreign to me that it had me wondering, "Is this how 20’s people interact now?" Not to say that anything is wrong with this, I loved how unpretentious and raw the characters were, with their sexuality, identity, and their lack of desire to fit into society's molds but I can't say I could personally associate or connect with them.

I believe my real issue with this book stems from the marrying of Casey's iconic writing with supernatural elements. For me, when authors delve into the unknown and start incorporating magical elements into their plotline, I expect more in terms of their rationale. One Last Stop suffers from magic being used as a convenient excuse for the mysterious circumstances while trying to justify it as science. While I can ponder on and on about the similarities between magic and science, within the premise of this book it fell flat.

Take Niko for example, he is a psychic of sorts who can commune with spirits, I can roll with that because it lends itself to a supernatural flavor. Then we have the conundrum that is Jane and being stuck on a train that the author is trying to explain through electricity and science???? Sis, either it's magic or its science.

I so desperately wanted to enjoy this, to be lost in a sea of Casey's prose and let her words wash over me but the supernatural element threw me for a loop.

Was this my most favorite book of all time- No, will I continue reading Casey- Yes!