We Could Be So Good
by Cat Sebastian
The recap
New York, the late 1950s. Nick Russo grew up poor in Brooklyn, worked his way into a reporting job at one of the city's biggest newspapers, and has learned to keep his head down and his private life very private. Andy Fleming is the owner's son: sweet, rumpled, hopelessly disorganised, and expected to take over the paper one day, so he has grudgingly agreed to spend a year in the newsroom. Nick expects to resent him. Instead he keeps covering for him, and a friendship forms that is fiercely loyal, funny and full of private jokes. But two men falling for each other in 1950s America are taking a real risk, and Andy's future at the paper is far from settled. Cat Sebastian writes with humour and enormous tenderness about two people trying to imagine a shared life in a world determined to forbid it, without ever losing the story's warmth. It is a cosy, slow-burning queer romance that feels both true to its period and wonderfully hopeful.
Why read it
For readers who want a gentle, swoony queer love story with a vivid mid-century setting and a found-family heart.
Fun facts
- 01
It won the 2024 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Romance.
- 02
Sebastian followed it with a loose companion novel, You Should Be So Lucky (2024), about a grieving reporter from the same paper and a slumping baseball player.
- 03
She first built her following with queer historical romances; her 2016 debut, The Soldier's Scoundrel, was a male/male romance set in early 19th-century England, published by Avon Impulse.
