Lo skillfully connects past, present, and future, defying censorship of LGBTQ+ narratives and celebrating our existence across time. While the book has some complexities and emotional weight, it serves as a powerful love letter to the diverse experiences of queerness. A poignant exploration of history, culture, and grief, resonating particularly with queer millennials.

A Scatter of Light by Malinda Lo is a masterful queer coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the first major Supreme Court decisions legalizing gay marriage. Fans of queer coming-of-age stories, Last Night at the Telegraph Club, and Malinda Lo’s masterful writing won’t want to miss this unforgettable novel.

A companion novel to Last Night at the Telegraph Club, this new novel features Aria, who instead of spending her last summer before college with her friends, is sent to San Francisco to stay with her Grandma, renowned artist Joan West, after an incident happened with a guy at school. She’s not happy about it, but she soon makes friends who make her question who she is, who she wants to be, and appreciate herself.

I think I enjoyed this book a lot more than LNATTC - but I can’t pinpoint why. Not that the other book wasn’t good, I think I just clicked to this one more. Aria is an interesting and fun character and I connected with her well. I enjoyed her relationship with her grandma and her exploration of her grandfathers work, as well as her interest in astronomy. I also really related to Aria’s journey of coming out and thought it was a beautiful example of how there’s not always that ‘aha’ moment, but small questions leading up to a realisation. Her relationship with Steph, the love interest, is where I start to not love this story. There’s a power and an age imbalance that is romanticised and I didn’t love it. But I did love the queer representation and the close knit queer community that was demonstrated.

I liked it so much more than the previous book by the author. I loved the artsy bit, the relationships, the characters.
I will defo read more books by Melinda Lo.

Coming of age story about discovering bisexuality through a relationship with somebody older.
Well written, I enjoyed the story and the characters, not a masterpiece but a good summer read.

definitely a solid 3.5! malinda lo will never fail to capture the quintessential queer experience with the most tangible writing and emotional touch. i loved how authentic, real and rightfully messy aria's path of coming to terms with her queerness felt. this book is about finding truths about yourself, finding comfort in the art one creates, family and legacy.

Aria Tang West thought she'd be spending one last summer on Martha's Vineyard with her friends before starting MIT in the fall, where she intends to study astronomy, like her late grandfather. But after topless photos of her are posted online, she's abruptly uninvited from her friends' summer homes.

Aria's parents, a writer and opera singer with plans of their own, send Aria to stay with her artist grandmother, Joan West, in Northern California. Although Aria has never been attracted to girls before, she finds herself drawn to Joan's gardener, Steph Nichols, an aspiring musician a few years older than Aria. The only problem? Steph isn't single; she lives with her girlfriend, Lisa. But the chemistry between Aria and Steph seems undeniable, and this will be a summer that will turn her world upside down.

Couldn't put it down

This book was incredible, I havent read last night at the telegraph club yet but reading this has shot it up my list, this book made me cry my heart out and I loved every single second of it

This destroyed me and amazed me just like Last night at the telegraph club, I'm si glad I got to read it

I pretty much only read this because I was kinda curious to find out what happened to Lily and Kath from Last Night At The Telegraph Club. I knew that they weren't going to feature heavily in this story, but the little detail we got did not make this story worth reading for me.

Aria is a character I could not force myself to like. Inserting herself into an already-established friend group, obsessing over Steph, a girl who was in a fully committed relationship and wrecking that relationship, causing Steph to cheat on her girlfriend just made her kinda nasty.

And even as Steph says at the end of the story, this won't affect Aria much. That summer would be such a minor detail to her in the future and I could see she wasn't looking for a relationship really, it was more of an obsession for her to win Steph, rather than genuinely falling in love with her.

A Scatter of Light is Malinda Lo's second novel that is within the same world as Last Night in the Telegraph Club. It is a sapphic romance that managed to pull on my heart strings yet again. Happy to find a new favorite author!

Many regards to Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for providing me this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Alexa, please play "Illitcit Affairs" by Taylor Swift.

A Scatter of Light is a sapphic, coming-of-age story of Aria Tang West, half-Chinese half-White, set at the dawn of Obergefell v. Hodges. Aria, who was supposed to spend a summer with her friends in their villa, found herself being forced to spend her summer at her grandma's place in California. Here, she would embark on a quest of discovery and self-acceptance through a relationship with Joan West's gardener, Steph.

Like Last Night at the Telegraph Club, this is a book about accepting self's queerness. Set in a very special context, Malinda Lo brings the readers on the journey to discover the colorful queer culture of 2015 California, where our protagonist, new to the vibrancy and the dynamics of queerness, learned to accept her identity. I also really like Malinda Lo's social commentary, although sometimes I feel like it could be more implicit. Moreover, the characters, namely Aria, Joan, Steph, were thoroughly developed: they felt pretty much like real people.

As much as the good points go, I cannot give this book more than 3.5/5 because of THAT trope. Normally I wouldn't mind, because it would provide the angst, but in this case I didn't like it at all because the parties involved were apathetically unapologetic about it. The other element I wish the author had better developed was the grief. The tragic event happened way too late in the book, as a consequence, Aria's mourning wasn't as thoroughly shown as it should be in my opinion. However, I think that the ending was highly tasteful for its openness, as it is not a love story with a happy ending.

Overall, I recommend this book if you are open to some unpopular tropes, but I don't think fans of Last Night at the Telegraph Club will necessarily like this one. Nevertheless, A Scatter of Light stands on its own as a meaningful coming-of-age story set in a period where queer culture became legitimized in American society, and how a new adult came to terms with her queerness in this particular context.

Many thanks to the publisher via NetGalley for the eARC of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Malinda Lo has once again provided us with a moving and understated story of teen queer awakening. After Aria has nudes leaked online just weeks shy of her high school graduation, her parents send her to spend the summer with her grandmother in California. Aria quickly falls in with a group of older lesbians, who help her come to terms with her own sexuality. The goodreads description of this book seems to promise some kind of follow up to Last Night At The Telegraph Club - this book definitely shouldn't be picked up on that basis. The one or two references we get are sweet, but they're no more than brief Easter eggs.

Lo is very good at capturing the complex emotional landscape of late adolescence and the burgeoning freedom that comes with it. She's never twee or patronising, and there's nothing cutesy about this - it takes the inner life of her young characters very seriously. I thought her recollection of 2013 was particularly good, capturing the spirit of late-Obama era LGBTQ+ progress without feeling rose-tinted.

The only thing I take particular issue with in this book is that it never really gets into the power imbalance of Steph and Aria's relationship. I don't think Lo explicitly states Steph's age, but it seems to be around 23, which feels a little icky when compared with Aria's 18. You do get a sense towards the end that the narrative implicitly disapproves of it, but the fact that it's never pointed out by, for example, Aria's school friends, feels a little nasty. I wish the end of the book had spent a little more time processing this - the last fifty or so pages felt like it was trying to cram everything in.

A beautifully messy coming into age story. I was emotionally hit and was engrossed the whole way through.

Just like her last novel, Malinda Lo writes beautifully and truly adds depth to her characters

This is a companion novel to Last Night at the Telegraph Club but set about 50 years after. I did enjoy this novel and flew through it very quickly but I did find the characters to be quite unlikeable and self centred.

A beautifully messy coming of age story about discovering your sexuality and identity through a relationship with somebody older. Malinda Lo writes the tender messiness of self discovery beautifully; at moments i felt like i was being taken apart from the inside. at it’s core This book is a journey of questioning. Coming into who you are. Figuring who you are after loss. Navigating toxic friendships and forging new stronger bonds.

First, this book is being heavily marketed as some kind of companion novel to Last Night at the Telegraph Club for some reason, but it's really not true. LNatTC is set in the 1950s, this is set in 2013. The main characters of the two books are distantly related, and there's a brief kind of "where are they now" bit, but that's it. You definitely don't need to have read Telegraph Club to read this, and if you're expecting anything approaching a sequel to it you'll be disappointed.

I say this because said connection is basically all I knew going in to this, along with the fact that I will read anything Malinda Lo writes. I didn't really know what I was getting myself in for, but I was pleasantly surprised.

This is a queer coming of age story featuring Aria, who is sent to stay with her grandmother in Berkeley, CA in the summer between high school and college. She falls for her grandmother's gardener, Steph, a butch lesbian, and the story unfolds from there.

Sweet, summery, sad, this book wonderfully captures the messiness of self-discovery. The relationships between Aria and Steph and her friends, her own friends, and her family, are beautifully depicted. It's a slow burn but also a fast read. I couldn't put it down.

II was so excited to read A Scatter of Light, after absolutely loving Last Night at the Telegraph Club and I was not disappointed! A Scatter of Light pulled on all of my emotions in a way, that most books cannot manage. Malinda Lo's writing is utterly charming and enchanting and I am so happy to have found their books!

A beautiful and emotional read. I absolutely adore anything and everything written by Malinda Lo and this was no exception. Absolutely stunning !!!!

4.5 stars rounded up

In this quiet, bittersweet coming-of-age novel, Aria Tang West - a biracial Chinese and white teenage girl from the East Coast - spends the summer with her grandmother in California, after photos of her topless are shared without her consent and her friends cancel their plans with her. At her grandmother’s place she meets Steph, a gardener and musician, who introduces her to the local queer community.

For all the the book is quiet and contemplative, Aria has an eventful summer. She has to deal with the emotional fall-out of the photos, finding her footing in a new group of friends and, most urgently, her new and unexpected feelings for Steph. Aria’s realisation that something very not-straight was happening was very relatable, and it was really beautiful to imagine her learning about that side of herself while surrounded by queer friends, just as gay marriage was legalized in California.

The only reason this wasn’t a full five stars is because I found the prose a bit flat sometimes. I think this was probably a deliberate choice by Lo, because Aria is the sort of character who disconnects from her emotions to deal with difficult situations (of which there are several in the book) but it created a distance that sometime took me out of the moment.
I received a free copy from NetGalley in return for an honest review.