This book was beautifully designed and produced. I am delighted that Bloomsbury is publishing stories by trans and genderfluid writers, and I wanted to like this book. However, the disjointed style and unlikeable protagonist meant that I struggled to enjoy it. It seems to take a part of life that is supposed to be hedonistic (which it is, in the book) and about self-discovery and loss, and make it utterly humourless. This book takes itself very seriously, but does not always earn its kudos for me.

Probably my favourite book of 2022.

Trans coming-of-age memoir in the era of indie sleaze glamour.

Achingly relatable queer... romance? Hmmmmm, more like a eulogy for the person you used to shag in your 20s who was a bit naff but somehow wormed their way into your heart.

A really sharp story about being queer; the trials and tribulations, and the fun. Death is haunting and the story builds so well.

Capturing the violent intensity and all-consuming passion of first love, Joseph's firecracker debut recounts a torrid affair and its subsequent aftermath across a decade and two continents.
A stone-cold masterpiece!!

Mixed feelings about this one, wanted to enjoy it more than I did, the apparent stream of consciousness narrative style, lost its charm very quickly. I wanted the main character to come out of this space and tell us the story, but instead we got more episodes in-between angst ridden remembering of their dead lover. The story felt depressingly familiar of queer angst when you in a relationship with an awful person. The writing was often over wrought and trying to hard and I wished many times for tighter editing.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted to love this but it was too disjointed for me. I found it hard to concentrate on the storyline. I can imagine some people will love this, it’s just not for me.

A powerful and at times moving book. The love scenes were violent but tender. The protagonist was a flawed character but honest. You were rooting for her.

I did like this book for the most part but this did have some moments that just dragged and it made it harder for me to read. The writing was generally fine but at times i found it hard to get into. The characters were done well and i liked how the story progressed and the way that the narrator developed over the course of the story. I think a couple of the side characters needed pushing a little further but they didn't appear enough to cause that much of an issue.

There's lots to love about this finger-on-the-pulse queer millennial tale with its hipster vibe, its cast of youthful models, artists, writers, and its angsty first love story.

But something about the writing felt a bit forced and laboured to me: 'heaving your gangly build, unwieldy as a bicycle frame, up on a makeshift stage', 'you were like a found photograph, black and white, black and white, of a little boy, bundled onto the Kindertransport by his desperate mother', 'you sealed the cave [i.e. the bedroom] by dragging another piece of plywood over the abyss, like the rock rolled over Christ's tomb' - this is personal taste but I'd have pencilled through all those clumsy similes, as well as the gratuitous and rather tasteless Holocaust reference.

Stylistic niggles aside, though, this is a hip and cool take on the lost love narrative - and what a great cover!

At Certain Points We Touch made my heart ache, but in a way that I can appreciate. Tender, but with bite.

This book was a bit hit and miss for me. I loved the plot and the subject matters touched upon but at times felt like the writing fell flat.

It’s rare that a book meets my exact expectations laid out by the blurb and the cover, but this is one of those times. I expected beautiful writing, an introspective character-driven story, and an exploration of queerness through art and self-expression. Lauren John Joseph delivered on every one of those counts and I’m incredibly grateful for it!

Our main character - known to us only as Bibby, a nickname used by a former lover - is reminded out of the blue of said former lover, who has since passed away, and reflects on their relationship. It was a very formative relationship for them, if not a particularly healthy one, that found its way into every aspect of their life.

Lauren John Joseph has created an incredibly evocative work of fiction, immersing us in the bohemian lifestyle of the queer scene in the early 2000s. You can’t help but be transported there, and while I’m sure I’m not the only queer person who has romanticised this lifestyle at some point or another, it is presented with all its reality here.

The only drawback of this book for me was its length. Usually I complain that books aren’t long enough - this one was perhaps too long, and would have packed an even stronger punch had it been a hundred pages shorter. That being said, it’s an astounding work of queer literary fiction, and I can’t wait to see what Lauren John Joseph writes next.

Thank you to the publishers for providing me with a free copy for review. All opinions are my own.

This book was not an easy read under every aspect, but I think it is an important novel nevertheless. This novel talks about a trans writer recollecting through letters and memories a relationship with an ex lover. A love that marked their life and made them believe in something close to love.

I will say that basically nothing was wrong with this book, except the fact that I just didn't connect with it or its characters. I found the character of Thomas James to be very far from my personal taste and I can't tell you why, but I couldn't understand why the main character kept coming back to him.
The writing in this one was really wonderful, I have to say that, and that was one of the reasons I thought I was going to like this book way more than I did.
The main voice I liked, the other characters never stood out in my opinion, and while this is surely a search into the main character's life, I would have loved to see more of what surrounded the rest.

So yeah, I still think this is a very good novel, just not something that met my taste, sadly.

Thank you for sending me a copy of this book to review. Sadly, I did not like this book. I found the central characters to be insufferable. Bibby kept on making awful decisions over and over, it was if she never learnt from anything she had done. Thomas had no redeeming qualities, he was just a horrible person. The relationship was toxic and abusive. I couldn't stand either of the main characters. A few of the supporting ones were okay. The writing almost made this book unreadable. Certain phrases kept on repeating, with no emotional impact. It was difficult to get through this book. I think to sum up this review, I will say that this book was really not for me and leave it at that. I have reviewed this on Goodreads, but will not be reviewing it on my blog as I don't have much more to say on it.

Thank you to Bloomsbury Publishing Plc for approving me for this ARC via NetGalley.
I started reading this book at the same time as I was reading "One Day" by David Nicholls as an audiobook and I was struck initially by the similarities of both books i.e. similar tropes, set in a similar time period with similar characters of people-in-their-twenties-living-it-up-in-London-who-are-stuck. It was a little bit of nostalgia for me as someone who was in their twenties around the same time, if not the same place.
But the books soon diverge - "One Day" being entirely devoid of any queer characters, or lifestyle, even being mentioned laterally. I find it interesting to note that "One Day" is a book written of its time (2010) whereas we - as a society, as a readership, and - consequently - the publishing industry, has moved on, evolved and we now expect (more than even accept) that queer/trans/non-binary voices and experiences are centred.
Can you centre something that's queer? Do you make the margins mainstream? If so, "At Certain Points We Touch" is a keen example of how this is done on its own terms, in its own language and for itself. This book doesn't pander. The characters - the narrator and those she/they portray - get to be themselves: unapologetic, uncompromising. It's too sophisticated to be raw. It is somehow nuanced and blatant at the same time. That's queerness in a nutshell, no?

This is a gorgeous queer mess of a book, and I was gripped by it throughout.

We start the book learning that a character has died, and that this book is our main character writing to them, and writing to capture their story before it floats away, and the "you" the book is directed towards is at turns tender and unsettling.

Parts of this book read like slam poetry, there is such a rhythm and cadence to how it swings through scenes of death, pain, fear, love, sex and joy, and it feels like it captures so much about what it means to be queer and in the throes of both euphoria and dysphoria. It is not afraid to get scary, filthy and sexy in equal measure, and yet there was still something so considered and smart about the way it covered a panorama of queer experience.

I was captured early on by its strength of voice, and I was worried that would peter out as the book went on, but far from it- the book built further nuance, pathos and joy into every line.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The ending of this book punched me in the stomach.

All the way through I wasn’t completely engaged. It was one of those books I found myself struggling through, tempted to put down and not excited to pick up, until I read the last third in one continuous session. Towards the end I was finally fully immersed and I’m glad I stuck around to the end.

I liked the use of the second person narrative, and as the book processed I learned to understand that the “you” of the narrative wasn't supposed to be perfectly likeable. But instead complex and difficult like all humans are.

I don’t think I loved this but the ending will stay with me for a long time.

3.5 stars

One of the best debut novels I've read in a while; "At Certain Points We Touch" definitely lived up to my expectations, its prose was both delicate and sharp, especially as far as the portrayal of millenial queer life is concerned, its main character, their struggle, passion and perspective felt familiar and the plot was, overall, well-structured.

I found this book really annoying, but I have a sick sense that it's because if I tried to write a book, it would be like this but less good. You know when you don't like someone and you know in your heart it's because they embody some of your less attractive qualities and you don't like to be reminded of it.

I, too, would write "I have been reading Ocean Vuong" because it sounds classier than "I'm reading On Earth we're briefly gorgeous" or whatever. It gives a sense of a wider cultural knowledge, as if Bibby has, of course, read all of Ocean Vuong, probably more than once, and she is much more capable than you are of connecting all the cultural dots and applying the insights to her own life.

A generous reader might suggest this is deliberate, symbolising Bibby's class anxiety - in fact the more I think about it, the more that makes sense to me, and the more inclined I feel to be that generous reader.

One thing I did really appreciate is the way that gender is sort of background to start with, and becomes more central as the book progresses. In some ways Bibby's gender and the way that informs her romantic and sexual life is the real plot of the book, or at least forms the meat of it, and this is presented so subtly that I hardly realised, despite my predilection to notice such things, until I was completely devastated by it. At the same time, Thomas James is so awful that it's hard to read about him as a love object, and Bibby is not much more likeable.

I did often want one of Bibby's friends to give her a stern talking to, rather than just radiating gentle, loving disappointment. I hate narrators without agency, who seem incapable of making good choices for themselves, who drift along at the mercy of whatever current tugs at them. We've all had sex we shouldn't have had: lust clouds - well, everything. But Bibby can't even make the choice not to go out in public with Thomas James, even while explicitly acknowledging that it would be bad to be seen on the arm of her best friend's boyfriend. And she seems shocked and hurt by the idea that her friends and lovers might be annoyed that she lives rent free on their sofas for long periods, while making zero effort to change anything about her life. Absolutely infuriating.

Now I've confused myself. Do I think this is good, or not? Do I hate the book, or the narrator? Can I separate the two? I honestly don't know. As my first book of 2022, it's not a good omen.

My thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC.

A little too overblown in narrative style, the purple prose didn't ultimately work for me. But I'll be keen to see what this author can do next.