Review: We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian

Title: We Could Be So Good

Author: Cat Sebastian

Publisher: Avon Books

Length: 383 Pages

Category: Historical Romance (1950s)

Rating: 5 Stars

At a Glance: Cat Sebastian does everything right with this story, from not making things unrealistically tidy to tidying things up for her characters in a way that defies the attitudes of the time and delivers their future together in perfect pitch.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: Nick Russo has worked his way from a rough Brooklyn neighborhood to a reporting job at one of the city’s biggest newspapers. But the late 1950s are a hostile time for gay men, and Nick knows that he can’t let anyone into his life. He just never counted on meeting someone as impossible to say no to as Andy.

Andy Fleming’s newspaper-tycoon father wants him to take over the family business. Andy, though, has no intention of running the paper. He’s barely able to run his life—he’s never paid a bill on time, routinely gets lost on the way to work, and would rather gouge out his own eyes than deal with office politics. Andy agrees to work for a year in the newsroom, knowing he’ll make an ass of himself and hate every second of it.

Except, Nick Russo keeps rescuing Andy: showing him the ropes, tracking down his keys, freeing his tie when it gets stuck in the ancient filing cabinets. Their unlikely friendship soon sharpens into feelings they can’t deny. But what feels possible in secret—this fragile, tender thing between them—seems doomed in the light of day. Now Nick and Andy have to decide if, for the first time, they’re willing to fight.

Review: Sometimes loving a book as much as I love We Could Be So Good feels like an emotional disorder. Like it’s a burden to carry this much joy around in my brain and not know what to do with it. Cat Sebastian does everything right with this story, from not making things unrealistically tidy to tidying things up for her characters in a way that defies the attitudes of the time and delivers their future together in perfect pitch.

Nick Russo and Andy Fleming are absolutely mush-brained for each other, only Andy doesn’t know it right away. Andy’s engaged to be married to a lovely woman, who’s still lovely even though she breaks off their engagement to be with another man. Andy is a little bit sad about the loss of the future he had mapped out in his head—wife, kids, etc.—but Nick is right there for him because Nick is always right there for Andy, every day and in every way. Their friendship is peak goals, really, their affection for each other gooey and oozing off the page like some kind of chocolate lava fountain of sweet devotion. Seriously, they connect in all the right ways and for all the right reasons, so kudos to the author for knowing and loving these characters so earnestly. I couldn’t have adored them more.

Set against a New York City backdrop in the late 1950s, the newspaper business takes center stage. If video killed the radio star, it didn’t do print news any favors either. The Chronicle is seeing a decline in its readership in the early days of television anchormen delivering the day’s headlines into people’s living rooms, and Andy being expected to take over at the helm of the family empire, such as it is, is leaving him somewhat paralyzed with fear of failing catastrophically. Cat Sebastian took such beautiful care with the tone and the setting of this story that it played like a background character as Nick, Andy, and the people they would eventually invite into their lives as friends and confidantes stroll through its pages.

We Could Be So Good is a story about wanting to live out loud when society demands you be silent. It’s a story about wanting to find your light when society demands you remain in the shadows. Nick grapples so hard with who he is that he’s determined to be alone forever even as Andy burrows under Nick’s doubts and fears and cuddles up against his need and longing to be Andy’s someone special. Andy has some fragile places too, which Nick shores up simply by being Nick. He shows his affection with food, and it’s a language that’s unmistakable.

This book is as heart-melting and soul-stirring as it could possibly be. A happy ending for two men, one of whom was certain he would never have one.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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