Book Review: Late to the Party by Kelly Quindlen
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Alternative title: Is this fucking play about us?I was in the mood for something similar to We Are Okay by Nina LaCour and Loveless by Alice Oseman, and this book did not disappoint. Late to the Party by Kelly Quindlen is a coming of age young adult novel about Codi, a 17 year old lesbian navigating friendship, her first romance, and growing up.
Just a heads up, my review may be incredibly biased, simply because I felt so seen by this book. I’ve also included a lot of the quotes, because they captured those uncertain first love feelings and experiences so well. It’s like Kelly plucked my thoughts and memories out of my brain and put them into a book. And the cherry on top was the nostalgic feeling of summer permeating throughout the entire book.
Codi has two best friends, JaKory and Maritza. They love spending their summer days at the pool and watching movies together. They’re so close, they’re like family. A family that Codi might be outgrowing. When Codi meets Ricky and all his friends, she feels as if her life opens up. She gets to breathe and act as the person that she wants to be, rather than the person she’s always been known as. And in the midst of it all, girl meets girl, and she struggles with navigating it all.
First Relationships and Navigating Lesbian Dating
There are so many moments where Codi acts just like me and so many other lesbians do. The whole “Oh, no, she’s just being nice” of it all when Lydia was clearly flirting with her. At one point Codi even says that exact thing: “I was pretty certain this was a date—my first-ever date—but I had a weight in my stomach telling me not to assume, not to get my hopes up, because there was still the possibility that Lydia was just really, really nice.”
Dating as a lesbian is a combination of worrying about being too forward and simultaneously not knowing how to be forward enough. When all you’ve grown up seeing in books, in movies, and in the world around you is the guy pursuing the girl, it’s hard to know how to do the whole “dating thing”. There’s no example to look up to, no stereotypical gender roles to fall back on. That’s the beauty and the terror of lesbian relationships. Everything feels new and bright and important. Kelly conveys that uncertain excitement well in the small moments between Lydia and Codi:
“The distance between us was strained. I could feel the fibers of the chair beneath my legs, buzzing and itching. My muscles were asking to get up, even if my brain was lagging behind them. I made the decision before I could think about it a second longer, and moved to sit with her on the bed. She scooted to make room for me, but our knees touched the slightest bit, and when I breathed in I could smell her shampoo.”
Codi is constantly getting flirty signals from Lydia, but always ends up bailing at the last second. I felt like Ricky in many instances yelling: "She offered you a ready-made chance to hang out with her!” I wish I could go back in time and yell that at myself. I had no clue what I was doing either the first time I dated a woman. Everything was new. I felt like a baby horse learning to walk, and I can empathize heavily with Codi’s self doubt and uncertainty in everything related to dating.
That self doubt of hers is always in her way telling her:
“None of this matters, she’s probably straight.”
Like when Lydia organized a party just for her:
“I stared at her; it almost sounded like she was saying this small hangout was set up specifically for me, and I wondered if I’d heard correctly.”
And when Codi wanted to tell Lydia her feelings, but she held back:
“I looked at her. I wanted to say something tender, something real, but the smallest talon of fear dug into my side.”
And again when she was painting Lydia’s portrait:
“My stomach was swooping and whirling all over the place. The truth was she looked simply and naturally beautiful, but I didn’t know how to tell her that, so I panicked and tried for something low-key instead.”
The author did a great job of depicting a useless lesbian. Always second guessing things and can’t make a move for the life of her. I felt so seen, almost too seen. Especially during the first almost-kiss scene between Codi and Lydia:
“Her expression grew serious, and her hand dropped to my knee. I felt it like a blast of heat. Neither one of us moved; we just sat there looking at each other. I couldn’t stop looking at her mouth, and I knew she was looking at mine, too. “Codi…” she said breathlessly. It was happening. She liked me and she was going to kiss me. This girl whom I liked so, so much was going to kiss me … And I had no idea what to do. The realization crashed around me. I wasn’t like Natalie or Terrica, confident about making out in a moonlit river; I wasn’t even like Ricky, brazen enough to steal a kiss beneath the trees. In this moment, when everything was real, when everything hinged on the brave, reckless confidence of my new self, I realized I’d never become that person at all. Lydia leaned toward me, her eyes flitting between my eyes and my mouth, but I sat frozen, too paralyzed to close the gap between us. “Um,” I said, shifting my knee out from under her hand. Lydia jerked back, and just like that, the moment was broken. Silence. Terrible, suffocating silence. I sat there trying to grasp the moment I’d just squandered. My heart was drilling and my palms were soaking with sweat. The tennis court lights were too white and too bright and everything inside me felt like it was struggling to breathe. I’d just thrown away the one thing I’d been waiting for forever…I lay on the floor for ages. My heart was now quiet and dull, almost numb. I closed my eyes and took myself back to the swings, rewriting that moment over and over again to a version where I didn’t choke. I wanted to take her for coffee and ask if we could try again. I wanted to swing by her restaurant with flowers. I wanted to drive her to the river and kiss her in the back seat of my car, but I did none of those things, because I felt stuck and stupid and ashamed.”
It’s like the author was with me in all my moments that I wanted to kiss my first girlfriend (but didn’t because I chickened out) and then she made a book about it.
Aside from relating heavily to Codi’s first attempt at dating, I also really enjoyed the relationship between Codi and Lydia. It felt natural rather than forced or built around tropes and caricatures (as so many books these days seem to do). They felt like real people that would really fall in love.
“[In] the spaces between everyone’s goodbyes, Lydia looked at [her]. [She couldn’t] describe it any more than that. She didn’t smile, she didn’t flutter her eyelashes, she didn’t do anything that could be read as outright flirtatious, but the truth was she kept finding [her].”
This quote reminded me of this other quote from the movie Frances Ha:
“It's that thing when you're with someone, and you love them and they know it, and they love you and you know it... but it's a party... and you're both talking to other people, and you're laughing and shining... and you look across the room and catch each other's eyes... but - but not because you're possessive, or it's precisely sexual... but because... that is your person in this life.”
I think about this a lot. She described that feeling so well.
Changing and Outgrowing Friendships
This book did feature a young lesbian navigating her first relationship, but at its heart it's about friendships and growing up. The author really nailed that feeling of being stuck in others' perception of you. Of wanting so desperately to break out of that mold, but finding it hard under the gaze of people who’ve known you for so long. When all they’ve known of you is acting one way, trying something new is incredibly difficult. But “[maybe you’ve] been telling [yourself] a story about who [you are], and maybe that story isn’t true.”
I empathize hard with Codi wanting to keep her two worlds from colliding. Codi “feels like [Maritza and JaKory] try to tell [her] who [she is] based on what [they] see. [She] met Ricky that night, and suddenly it felt like [she] could be whomever [she] wanted to be because he wouldn’t know the difference. [She] needed to know [she] could do that…[She] wanted to feel like [she] was becoming [herself]”.
JaKory and Maritza have always known her as the careful, quiet artist. They haven’t seen this new side of her. Ricky, Lydia, and their friends know her as this funny, free-flowing girl. It’s like when you’re hanging out with friends around your family and they get to see this whole other side of you. It’s a very vulnerable and self conscious feeling.
When Codi was with Ricky and her new group of friends she had the space to try new things at her own pace rather than taking into consideration the opinions, feelings, and perceptions of others. Namely Maritza and JaKory. “[She] realized it didn’t matter…It was [her] choice to decide whether [she] wanted to try it or not.”
Ricky is my absolute favorite. Not surprising, because I’m not into tropes UNLESS it’s about a lesbian and her jock best friend. Or found family. Kind of like Robin and Steve from Stranger Things.
Ricky acts as the human embodiment of this meme for Codi:
“Are you sure you haven’t been sabotaging yourself this entire time with these stupid fucking ideas of how you’re supposed to be…being shy, and being anxious, and being someone who never went to parties and never went on dates and never kissed anyone before! How much of that stuff is actually you, Codi, and how much of it is you thinking that it’s you? It’s not like you’re some defective, half-alive seventeen-year-old who can’t make friends or talk to people. You’ve been doing it all fucking summer! You have an incredible opportunity with Lydia right now, and you’re blowing it because you can’t get over yourself and stop imagining that you’re so different from everyone else!”
He understands her fears and reservations and how most of them are self-inflicted. Ricky gets her to open up and change her outlooks towards life and herself. So in a way he’s her platonic-manic-pixie-dream-boy-bestie.
This book is geared toward gay teenagers, but I believe that any young adult navigating new friendships, relationships, and growing up would like this book and relate to it. Especially those who, like myself, are fans of Heartstopper and are trying to break out of their “quiet girl” reputation.
Star Rating: 4/5