I think I enjoyed this one, but I did find it tough - because I don't know anything about New York. I'm in the UK, I don't even know much about London - because I don't live anywhere near London, and all the cities and their complications are SO different - so I feel like, hmm, I was missing so much not just as a not-city dweller but also as someone who just doesn't know any of the New York stereotypes (this isn't the word I'm looking for - generalisations about people and place, I guess), and who was constantly flipping back to the map at the front of the book. NKJ absolutely shouldn't have to explain this stuff, she truly shouldn't, because that's not the vibe of the book, but. I'd be so interested to see how different people from all sorts of different places interpreted it, what we caught and what we didn't.

It's a book very lovingly grounded in place and I adore it for that - and I love all of the beautiful, queer avatars of the city... (BRONCA! My love!) but I felt like I was fumbling around in the dark HARD when it came to understanding any of the references or in-jokes, and was googling like wild. I get this is probably the point, it's supposed to be very interior feeling? But I was sinking sometimes, rather than swimming.

TL;DR agreed on the NY exceptionalism? It will be good if we go to more cities and see what she does there?

And also, Bel's dialect was...well, let's just say that I've never, ever heard anyone talk like that except for Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is probably what made me a little grumpy.