The redeeming qualities of this book include the prose and significance within queer literature and history. This is my first time reading Baldwin and he had a very nice writing style thats both poetic but easy to digest. The main character and plot also adress both queerphobia in the 1950s from mainstream society and government. It also offers glimpses on issues within the community, including racism, white privilege, internalized homophobia, misogyny, and transphobia. 

However as for plot and characters I didn’t find much engagement. I knew going in these characters were going to be dislikable and flawed, which is fine. Many stories I love feature characters that are extremely flawed and have low likability. But the cardinal sin for characters in my opinion, is to be annoying or boring.  Every character in this story filed under one or both of those criteria. It was extremely hard to care about the struggles or conflicts these characters were facing when I didn’t find anything engaging about the characters to begin with. At some parts in the audiobook I’d start cracking jokes in my head just to make the experience slightly more entertaining.