Thanks NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book! It was heartfelt and eye opening. My first book based on this culture and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

THE best book I've read all year. I rarely buy books for myself or attend author events, and I'm frothing at the mouth to attend tonight's launch. So tender, a masterful exploration of ghosts, guilt, and shame. I felt transported to book's dual settings, and the rotating POVs never felt uniform or too much. As a judgmental person, I couldn't believe how subtly I was guided to question whether the people I perceived to be the villains of the story were bad, forgivable, or just not my business. I will read anything this author writes and feel so lucky to have received a DRC.

IG and Goodreads review TK

Thank you to NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A story of love, loss, betrayal, and growth; Cinema Love by Jiaming Tang is not a story one will soon forget.

Cinema Love is written in the voice of several narrators, including Old Second: a gay man who frequented the Workers’ Cinema: a cruising spot for the queer men in Mawei, Fuzhou, Bao Mei, who worked the ticket booth at the theater, and Yan Hua, who is married to another patron of the Workers’ Cinema.

Each character is written with care and respect to their differing and sometimes contradictory views, I genuinely appreciate the nuance with which this story was penned. We have characters who are imperfect, some of whom make unforgivable choices, but we watch them grow anyway- despite everything.

Not only is this a story about queerness, it’s also a story about immigrants, and Cinema Love provides a holistic view of these two experiences.

All in all, this was a banger of a debut novel, and I for one can’t wait to see what Jiaming Tang does next.

This book. Wow. Big thanks to Dutton for providing an advanced copy of this beautiful tale. A solid debut IMO. Time jumps and multiple POV's are not everyone's cup of tea but I did enjoy this book a lot. I thought the story wove together a lot of different themes and made me ask questions about what each of these characters are facing. Overall, an enjoyable, yet contemplative read.

I can't believe this is a debut! Tang truly has written a triumph of queer lit in Cinema Love. This book was heart-wrenching and tender, and full of incredible love. I am eagerly anticipating any future works by Tang!

A beautiful heartbreaking story of love, betrayal, and so much more. Old Second and Bao Hai are married and living in New York, on the margin, struggling to keep their heads up in the pandemic but it's their back story, and the story of their meeting at a cinema in China that pulls this forward and back. It might sound like a soap opera - Old Second loved Shun-Er, who was married to Yan Hua. Yan Hua emigrates to NY as well. Her friend May's husband Kevin- oh no spoilers! It's not a soap opera at all. This moves around in time (a lot) and you might find it difficult at times to keep everyone straight but then I suspect that you, like me, will have totally succumbed to the story, the characters, the writing and it will all be clear. Yan Hua has a deep shameful secret that makes her key to so much of what happens to these people-and to others. And Tang has found so many small things (Yang Hua's social media, Old Second's work at a restaurant, Bao Hai's brother the ghost) that illuminate this absolutely wonderful novel. It's much more than I expected-and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. Highly recommend.

Cinema Love is a beautiful snapshot of someone skipping stones over a lake, whereas we start with one character who leads to another whose impact leads to another and so on. Every character felt real and brave in their own form of tenacity, whether that was through the lens of love or merely surviving. We delve into the Chinese communities a few of the protagonists grew up in, understanding how risky their choices were and how some of them simply wanted love in return--- whether that was romantic, platonic, familial, or other.

Tang has a wonderful way of depicting scenes, evoking emotions and feelings that felt true and unique to characters that I was highlighting passages almost constantly.

The ending stuck the landing of a well-developed story. In a moving way, in an unguarded way, such that it's impossible to walk away from this thinking this is just another love story. The secret love, the confident love, the lasting love, the jaded love, the unfulfilled love, the understanding love, every facet of each is handled with such tenderness and respect through the eyes of our characters---even the ones you may not be drawn to---that it casts a shadow that extends beyond the final page.

In rural Fuzhou, China, the Workers' Cinema is more than just a movie theater - it's also where local queer men can gather in safety and find love. Over the course of several decades, CINEMA LOVE charts the course of Old Second, Bao Mei, and Yan Hua and their tangled relationships to queerness, cultural identity, and each other.

"Because now I realize how lonely it is not to talk about the people you love."
"It's lonelier to talk about the people who don't love you back."

This book was complicated, messy, and thought provoking - a triumphant debut. Each of the many interconnected characters is nuanced and interesting. There is no clear black-and-white here - this story lives in the many shades of gray. There is hurt and there is triumph and there is love. Some of the love is romantic, some of it is platonic, and not all of it is reciprocated or healthy or lasting. This isn't a romance, but love is certainly at the center of this story.

Tang's writing is gorgeous and powerful - there were so many lines that I highlighted to come back to later. Three separate timelines - post-socialist China, 1980s Chinatown, and present-day NYC - are woven together. Although it doesn't always move linearly, the way they knit together in the end is very satisfying.

This book is about queer identity, but Tang also provides interesting commentary on immigration, assimilation, and cultural identity. There are so many different things you could unpack here - I think this would be an excellent choice to discuss with a book club.

I suspect I'll be thinking about this one for a while - highly recommend.

Cinema Love by Jiaming Tang is just absolutely beautiful!
This a must read!
Utterly captivating, heart-breaking and truly amazing.
I loved everything about it.

Thank You NetGalley and Publisher for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

One of the loveliest books I've read in a while, Cinema Love is almost aggressive in its tenderness. It’s a love letter to queer spaces (and the importance of protecting them), oft-neglected immigrant narratives, and Manhattan’s Chinatown. This book is haunting and not always easy to read, but somehow impossible to put down - I’ll be recommending it all summer.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Dutton for the ARC <3

Cinema Love by Jiaming Tang is a staggering, tender epic about gay men in rural China and the women who marry them. It's a novel that explores human love, grief, secrets, and desires. Can any of these emotions be just black and white?

Old Second and his wife, Bao Mei, have cobbled together a meager existence in New York City’s Chinatown. But their story starts in China, where both of them met at a rundown cinema theater. This cinema plays movies but it was also a place for gay men and some were married. This book is not just about these men, but it's also about the wives.

This book is a debut, but it feels like anything but. It feels like a delicate peony, and once you start unraveling it, you find layers and layers underneath. It takes on sexual identity, the stigma of identity, the duality of love, the betrayal that the partner feels, poverty, immigration, and ultimately, human connection.

Thank you, Dutton Books for this book.

It appears that my experience with this book diverged from those of other reviewers. I anticipated a poignant love story featuring gay men in China, yet what unfolded was more akin to a disjointed assortment of chapters lacking coherence. Contrary to my expectations, the narrative primarily revolved around gay men entangled in marriages with women, clandestinely meeting their male lovers on the side. This unexpected direction left me perplexed and struggling to grasp the overarching storyline.

The synopsis of this book really appealed to me. A story spanning decades, from China to the US, dealing with the fallout of people who attended the Worker’s Cinema, a cruising place for gay men in rural China. The glimpses into gay life in rural China in the 80s were super interesting. I liked seeing the connection between the men who found refuge in the theater and the people who ran the space.

This book ends up following more characters than just Old Second and Bao Mei who are mentioned in the synopsis. All of the characters are connected and it does make sense why their stories are being told… However, at times it felt more like a collection of stories rather than a full novel. There were so many large time jumps or important scenes that happened off page that I felt like I wasn’t getting the full picture of these people’s lives.

I’m definitely open to reading more from Jiaming Tang in the future. I enjoyed the explorations of queerness, immigrant communities, and the complicated relationships that exist throughout decades.

This was an expansive and beautiful portrayal of the gay and lesbian experience in China and in the newly immigrated Chinese community in America in the 21st Century. What I found most remarkable about this novel was how it demonstrated the cascading effects of our failed and followed aspirations over time—and the human ability to be resilient and adaptable, always finding ways to survive. In many respects, this novel reminded me of Matthew Lopez’ “The Inheritance” about the shared and interlocking experience of the LGBT community in America—but this work considering this theme across continents. As a text that aims to explore the subtleties and nuances of identity, history, and relationships, I found it to be engrossing.

It's an oddly lyrical mix of beautiful and bleak and indulgent. A narrative of lives intersecting through migration, grief, guilt and poverty, specifically for Fuzhou Chinese migrant workers. While I found the POVs of Old Second and Bao Mei engrossing and heart-wrenching, I found myself impatient and jarred by the parts from Yan Hua's POV. I wish her growth was not as much of a focal point in this story, as the other two. I wish those parts of the narrative space was devoted instead to how Old Second and Bao Mei ended up together. While I find the choice to tell this tale in a nonlinear fashion, focusing on internal journeys, interesting, I feel like it sacrificed breathing room for some truly necessary bits of storytelling, including the effects of the pandemic on poor and elderly Chinese immigrants. Overall, a decently heartfelt debut novel about overlooked fabrics of existence around being Asian immigrants and being queer.

First and foremost, thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Dutton for this eARC of Cinema Love!

In reading this book, I felt transported. Genuinely. I fell into the stories of Old Second, Bao Mei, and Yan Hua. As the characters that get the most focus in this incredible novel, they are so strongly developed and such real-feeling that it is hard not to hope for them to find their ways through the world. Each of them is shown to be flawed in ways that create such fascinating internal struggles and it provides a window into a times and places I have never been in. Beyond those three, though, other characters that are featured along side them get relatively strong development, which is a massive strong suit for this book. It is so character-driven that characters that would often be underdeveloped in similar books also get their own worlds in just as intriguing ways.

I love the way that Cinema Love flows through time, making it feel very much like time is as fluid as water. The past and present flow seamlessly together and it brings all of the stories together beautifully. I really don't have a negative to say about this book!

CINEMA LOVE
Jiaming Tang

Last week I had a dream that a man kissed me slowly and made love to me even slower. I woke up to find that CINEMA LOVE was next up on my TBR, it had to be fate.

Called tender, which I would love to challenge, CINEMA LOVE is about a group of married men who meet at a cinema in the middle of the day in China to watch old movies and have affairs with men.

Their wives are not always aware this is happening, often they do not approve, and when the relationship between the men carries over to their marriage bed, it threatens to destroy their marriages and their place within their families and communities. It is important to them to keep this part of themselves secret from those in their family, church, and members of their community.

If the women in these marriages were complicit, I believe I would’ve experienced the material differently than I did. Given how it was the material did not feel objective. It was intentionally persuasive, even offering a character that went against the norm to further solidify its viewpoint. Given a bigger fence with more room to roam, I perhaps would’ve experienced the relationship dynamics differently.

One alternating perspective would’ve gone a long way and would’ve provided an opportunity for discussion. How it was, was a little too one-sided.

Thanks to Netgalley, and PENGUIN GROUP Dutton | Dutton for the advanced copy!

CINEMA LOVE…⭐⭐⭐

Beautiful and tragic. This is my first book from the author and I will continue to read more. I loved their prose and storytelling.

Jiaminig Tang's Cinema Love is a tour de force. I found myself invested in the characters' stories and rooting for each of them. Heartbreaking and peppered with humor, Cinema Love is not to be missed..

Cinema Love has been one of my most anticipated debuts for 2024. Tang is a queer immigrant debut novelist who holds an MFA from the University of Alabama and a 2022 Center for Fiction emerging writer who delivered an incredible character-driven literary fiction book for your summer stacks.

This heart-aching story chronicles the relationship between Bao Mei and Old Second, who are not necessarily in love but begin their married life in rural China.

Old Second finds relationships and love at a rundown cinema, where Bao carefully guards the ticket booth, keeping the secrets of each person who buys a ticket there. Many a disgruntled wife comes in search of her husband only to be turned away by Bao, but there is a reason she feels called to this role and the people who inhabit the dark corners of this place.

When Old Second finds love, Tang's searing description of the affair nearly took my breath away: "Theirs is the kind of love that can change the weather. A radio forecast predicting rain switches its tune the moment Old Second sees Shun-Er."

But when tragedy strikes, those involved become haunted by what they did and did not do, which could have changed the trajectory of the tragedies that spill upon the pages.

This novel is the perfect literary fiction book to sink your teeth into both cinematic in its setting and Tang's magnificent writing.

Readers should know that Tang does not gloss over many horrific elements of homophobia, asking the reader to confront what was happening in the past. Tang smartly brings the story full circle in many ways during the pandemic as they navigate New York, showcasing racism rampant during this time with another jarring scene with a perspective that made me cry.

The cast of characters is vast, and the rhythm of the voices felt confusing at times, but I found this book worth the journey experience offered. The novel explores contradictions between communities of people, but even more the contradictions within ourselves.

While I hate to compare this to A Little Life, as people have such strong reactions to this book's themes, the range of this story, felt similarly built but with additional layers through the immigrant experience and offering an #ownvoices perspective.