I loved this book. The story centers around Old Second, Bao Mei and Yan Hua. They have all immigrated to NY from China and we see their struggles as they acclimate to this new life, which most of the time is very challenging.

But the main focus is how they were all connected in the past via a cinema in China where gay men cruised looking for love.

You can’t help but feel a connection to these characters (and others we meet along the way) due to this author’s writing. It is a complex story that was executed beautifully.

I enjoyed this one! There were times when I had a hard time following the story, there’s time jumps and it switches POV occasionally without chapter titles with names, so on audio sometimes it could get a little tough to keep up if you can’t be completely focused.

Aside from that though, the story was really interesting, and the characters were well developed. There’s many different types of love described in this book, different kinds of relationships, and it shows how people can grow and change with time.

This was such a beautiful and tender depiction of love . The writing was incredible .

Thank you for the eArc .

An incredibly moving and captivating debut about Chinese American immigrants trying to make a life in New York and the community of gay men who frequent a cinema to find queer love outside of their marriages. Great on audio and a fantastic read. I look forward to more from this author and am OBSESSED with the book's cover! Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review!!

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for providing and e-arc in exchange for an honest review!

a story that spans decades about gay men in rural china during the 80's experiencing lust and love in an old cinema, and in the later years until the 2020's with the woman who marry them. there is a lot packed into this story as you delve into the lives of multiple characters. some of them likeable, some of them not, but you can't help but understand them considering the betrayals they felt, the shame they experienced, and the yearning for more than what they had in life that sunk deep into their bones. you followed them throughout many phases in their lives, exposed to the high's and the lows. these characters learn to navigate varying degrees of loss, grief, friendship, and companionship.

i have to say that for a debut novel, the writing was vivid and just as cinematic as the plot. these characters were brought to life in the most colorful and bold ways. really enjoyed this one!

The writing in Cinema Love is both simple and beautiful, taking you through intertwined stories. It does move slowly, but it fully pays off with a lovely ending.

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.