Salih writes about two friends who both end up in their early 30s, living in the DC metro area, and feeling very differently about what it means to be a gay man in the wake of the Supreme Court decision affirming the right for same sex couples to marry. I found the main characters’ divergent ways of thinking really interesting and in the case of Oscar, hilarious in its satire. I still can’t decide if I am supposed to take him seriously, which I have to believe if the author’s point. I found the writing engaging, and laughed really hard at some points and totally stressed in others. I felt like the characters were well developed and I was, ultimately, rooting for everyone to get their shit together and their own version of a happy ending. Overall, I highly recommend LGBTP (also love that the author did this!).

I really wanted someone to talk about this book with SO BADLY (specifically my friends who are in same-sex marriages in the DC area!). So, if you’ve read the book, what did you think??

The book is the view of two lives in contemporary Gay America. Oscar is angry and bitter over the cultural changes in the Gay community and the (finally) legal ability to marry. Sebastian is a teacher who spent his childhood closeted and has this sadness about a lifetime lost being unable to live as his true self.
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This was a great debut. Oscar and Sebastian lives connect briefly in childhood and the book examines how differently their lives become. Both men have experienced different forms of trauma which have also shaped them. While they don’t overlap as much as I thought they would I loved the mirroring between the two men. Both longing for connection, both obsessing over someone who’s experience being gay is outside of their own time, both men having unhealthy habits. They both did things that made me very uncomfortable , but I don’t feel they were unrealistic. The book can definitely open up A LOT of conversations on acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. I also feel it’s important to say that it is a really interesting look at the implications of preventing people from being their true selves. It was interesting to see how the desire for a freer experience and the jealousy over a freer experience can affect these men.
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I struggled a bit because I found both men unlikeable as characters. I would begin to feel better about the characters and then they would do something and I would slide back into the cringe zone.
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A few TW for suicide (not on page), unhealthy habits such as drug and alcohol use, fantasizing over a minor, detailed descriptions of sex and oral sex.

"Let's Get Back to the Party" is a thought provoking novel about two gay men navigating the world around them in a unique time in queer history.

Being set just weeks after the Supreme Court's decision on making same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states, the novel revolves around Oscar and Sebastian, two childhood friends who end up reuniting at a wedding.

The novel divides its time between these two characters which both feel very different ways on being and growing up as gay men and provides some unique looks at life that are often looked over and can be somewhat unpopular.

For example, Oscar provides a unique perspective on the SC's decision that is often not heard, and it's viewing the decision as a somewhat attack on the gay community. He feels it's an attempt to blend gay people in, rather than allowing them to continue to stand out as not straight.

Oscar looks at his life and his outlook on being a gay man is very different from Sebastian's. Oscar spends his time with hookups and wants to forget the troubles of his past. Sebastian, on the other hand, looks at the LGBT+ youth at the school he teaches with envy and hopes for them the better future he didn't necessarily have.

What makes this book so amazing, asides from its unique perspectives, is the emotion Salih's able to pour into these characters that makes it a book easy to relate to. It does not take being a middle aged or older gay man to resonate the fear of growing up that these two have. Even being an 18 year old, the thought of being left behind on the social clock of growing up strikes a cord deep within me. This is a struggle that gay people may especially be able to resonate with no matter what age.

This is simply a book that will keep you reflecting on your own life as the characters do the same. The characters themselves weren't anything too special or people to fall for, but they serve an important purpose in telling this story and delivering these emotions, which makes up for their sometimes lackluster personalities.

"Let's Get Back to the Party" is a beautiful and emotional story that will have readers thinking about their own lives and of Oscar and Sebastian's.

Final rating: 4/5 stars.

Sebastian and Oscar were friends when they were in elementary school. When Oscar moved away, Sebastian wasn't sure if he would ever see him again. But they did see each other again when they were in college and then again now, at a wedding, Sebastian is a plus one for his friend Dani. Sebastian believes this may be the time when he will be able to fulfill his thoughts about Oscar. Will they be able to build a friendship again and maybe something more?

Thank you to Algonquin Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this title.


This book moved slowly for me. It switches back and forth between Sebastian and Oscar narrating the book. They are both deeply hurt men, who are trying to find their way in the changing world. A world that looks like it is becoming more accepting of the LGBTQ+ community when a tragic incident happens.

Each of these men is dealing with their own demons as it concerns their homosexuality. Both of them are sad even though Oscar probably wouldn't admit it. The story follows these two as they go through a year of changes that change them as well.

3.5 stars

Does rainbow cutesy kitsch and corporate sponsorship annoy you during Pride Month? Also pisses off the main character in this book, Oscar. He longs for a grittier time in gay culture, when he felt people were more free to live outside the constraints of heteronormativity. Meanwhile, the other main character, Sebastian, mulls over a breakup following a move to the suburbs. This book takes us through the cultural shifts in Washington, DC gay men’s culture with the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling and the Pulse Nightclub shooting.

A twist in the story led me to deeply dislike one character. I enjoyed the depictions of Washington, DC, and its gay men’s scene. This is a fairly interior book, examining Oscar’s and Sebastian’s differing approaches to their identities as gay men.

Kajree G's review said it best "Let's Get Back to the Party is quite a complex book to explain, if I'm honest. Zak Salih has created an array of complex characters that you don't know whether to love, dislike or relate to."

The story revolves around Sebastian and Oscar (it switches narrators) who were childhood best friends before they were "out", their paths cross once before in college but they run into each other again at a wedding of two friends after Sebastian and his boyfriend broke up. They are two different people - Sebastian is more of a sad-boy, school teacher really looking for love and acceptance, while Oscar is more of the party-type, always hooking up with someone new. Their relationship is a push and pull through the story, both wanting to be friends at times and also not wanting to be friends at times.

Sebastian's story turns one way - looking at the younger LGBTQ community when he starts an ally group at school, and Oscar's another when he meets an older sex-positive gay icon. Both go out of their way to try to impress their respective groups which makes for some interesting and desperate situations.

The setting is Washington DC and mostly revolves around the gay "hot-spots" in the area, being from the DC area and having plenty of gay friends, I really enjoyed seeing these parts of the city through another's eyes and represented within a book.

This book is very explicitly sexual so just be aware if that's not going to be up your alley, but it shares great insight.

All in all, I'm not quite the target audience so I didn't love-love it, but it was raw and thought provoking. I am really glad it was written as I think we need to hear more stories like this.

*I received an arc in exchange for an honest review*.

"You'll start wishing things were, for you, the way they are instead of the way they were...You'll start longing for a life others have instead of the life you have."

Most of us have experienced that longing for a better life. The life we think others have and we feel it is not in our reach because of whatever excuses we give ourselves.

I feel this is one of the many themes in Let's Get Back To The Party by Zak Salih. This first time novelist has brilliantly taken the time frame of when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage to the massacre at the gay nightclub Pulse to show us two very different outlooks on the progression of gay life in America.

Sebastian, 35 years old, single, and gay is a man searching for his version of normalcy. He wants to settle down and lead a quiet life with no drama.

Oscar, 35 years old, single, and gay is a man searching for the gay community he feels has been lost to assimilation into the straight world. He wants to be part of the Pride parties, to revel in the uniqueness of his sexuality and to cause havoc.

Sebastian and Oscar were childhood friends who are reunited while both experiencing crossroads in life. Being gay is their only common denominator, or so they think. As they meander through a changing society, both with very different regrets, we see how just like immigrants, religions and ethnicities they can be at odds even if they are lumped into the same group.

I applaud the author for this unique character study that expresses so poetically how individuality leaves us each with our own experience from similar events.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via #NetGalley for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.

4.5⭐
Let's Get Back to the Party bookends with the Supreme Court decision to legalize gay marriage and the Pulse Nightclub shooting.
Told via alternating points of view, we meet Sebastian and Oscar who were friends in grade school before they drifted apart. After a chance reunion in their mid-thirties, Sebastian wants to reconnect with Oscar.
Sebastian and Oscar have polar opposite lifestyles - Sebastian wants to settle down and build a quiet life, while Oscar wants to embrace every aspect of being a gay man.
Zak Salih is so talented in his ability to write both perspectives so uniquely. Both men's point of views are written stylistically different and with drastically different outlooks on life.
I found myself drawn to Sebastian as a friend and worried about decisions that he was making. Oscar stressed me out because of his lack of direction. I could relate to both Sebastian's need to have a plan in life and Oscar's need to have his own safe place.
Let's Get Back to the Party is a very solid debut and I look forward to Salih's future writing.

Let's Get Back to the Party follows childhood friends Sebastian and Oscar as they weave in and out of each other's lives as very different gay men trying to navigate an ever-changing social landscape. Sebastian is a homebody who wants to settle down with familial comforts, while Oscar is a man of the night who measures his own worth by his conquests, however both struggle to reconcile their early closeted years against a newer generation's apparent lack of need for a closet at all.

The perspectives provided by both characters are unlike any I've read or considered before, but I have no doubt that the issues presented in this novel are things many gay men my age likely deal with, if not as obsessively as our two protagonists. Salih's writing is strong: both character perspectives are in first person and I found them to be distinctly voiced. I also had a real sense of life in DC and the surrounding area, and appreciated the emotion Salih brought to the narrative when tragedy strikes the entire community

I look forward to what Salih brings us next!

This review by Erick sums up my feelings as well. The main characters read like whiny stereotypes. The author may have relied too much on creating a character study rather than an engaging story, but when the characters aren't interesting there wasn't anything to fall back on.

I did appreciate an LGBT story written by someone other than a straight white woman (I've read and loved many of the usual offenders). An insight into cultural differences between heteronormative and LGBT social groups delivers in Let's Get Back to the Party and highlights where other authors lack knowledge and experience.

Oh, can the author use quotation marks in the next book? That would be helpful. The writing isn't good enough to not use them. It was very distracting. This isn't Cormac McCarthy.

Before we go any further, can we take a moment to admire this stunning cover? It's definitely going to be one of the most memorable this year!

Okay, now to the review. Let's Get Back the Party follows childhood friends over the course of a year while they try to come to terms what it means to be gay men in an ever-evolving world.

The book starts right after the June 2015 Obergefell Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing same-sex couples the right to marry. Sebastian is desperate to settle down after recently being dumped but still not ready to date. He runs into his old friend Oscar, whom he hasn't seen in over a decade, at a wedding and it's clear they're on different paths - Oscar can't put tear himself away from his phone and incessant dating app alerts. Their stories unfold from there - Oscar, desperate for the "good old days" when being gay wasn't mainstream and before the culture was co-opted by straights, befriends a writer and icon of the AIDS era and tries to rediscover the outrage and activism of that time, while Sebastian gets close to one of his high school students who's out and proud and everything Sebastian wishes he could be. These relationships force the two former friends to reconsider what they really want out of life, and they bob in and out of each other's worlds until the books culminates with The Pulse Nightclub shooting.

I thought these two pivotal events in gay history were interesting bookends for the story and I found Sebastian and Oscar's different takes on what it means to be gay poignant but I wish the characters had more dimension. It felt like they were drawn to be such clear opposites and although I liked how their stories resolved at the end, I wanted more reason to root for them throughout the book.

Thanks to Algonquin and the author for a copy to review.

Thank you so much, Algonquin Books and NetGalley, for the chance to read this book.


Sebastian Mote is a high school teacher and, after a bad breakup, all he wants to do is finding the right person and settle down. He envies his queer students, how freely they live their sexuality and how hard it was for him growing up. When, at a wedding, he runs into his childhood friend Oscar Burnham, he hopes for a second chance, but Oscar doesn't care about their past or bonding. While both of them have to find themselves in a rapidly changing world, Sebastian and Oscar collide again and again.

Let's get back to the party is told by two very different POVs. Sebastian, with his longing and envy towards a queer student, Oscar, upset with bachelorette parties, friends getting married and what he sees as the death of the gay culture. So he gets close to an icon of the AIDS era, obsessing and envying him for his past and adventures. Sebastian and Oscar are very different, in their fears, desires and hopes and they are well written and rounded characters.
I have to say I had difficulties getting drawn to the story, because of the writing style and the narration. It swings from character to character, from past to present, from memories to present. Overall, I enjoyed reading this book, mostly for the characterization.
Sebastian, Oscar, Sean are wonderfully written characters and the story is brilliant, provocative, sometimes funny and sad at the same time. It's a book about identity, culture, books, art, love and friendship.

Let's Get Back to the Party is quite a complex book to explain, if I'm honest. Zak Salih has created an array of complex characters that you don't know whether to love, dislike or relate to. The novel focuses on two distinctly opposite characters - Sebastian and Oscar. While Sebastian is soft and sad and wants to settle down, Oscar vows to live life with excitement and euphoria. He has a general distate towards marriage.

When Oscar meets an unlikely author in a quaint bar after getting stood up for his date, an unlikely bond forms with this man - Sean Stokes. Immediately, Sean becomes an idol figure for Oscar. Sebastian on the other hand is lonely in his mini trailer home with an aching heart for his student. Events are set in motion after Sebastian and Oscar meet in a gay wedding, best friends childhood who's drifted apart only to be brought back by fate once more. While I didn't really like Oscar as a character, I think his development throughout the book was commendable!

Through the book, we get to go on a journey of complexities and confused thoughts of our main characters - wanting love, wanting sex, wanting bonds and wanting to be free. I'll admit though, I did find it a little difficult to get into the story at first, especially because of the unusual style of dialogues and narration. And there were times I wish we got more depth into the characters, got to know the side characters too - which I felt was lacking a little.

However, I think the way Salih crafted this plot with so much precision and meticulous planning is commendable. I absolutely adored how the story tied up at the end, how the characters grew and took control of their own selves, how they realised their mistakes and wrong-doings. I enjoyed reading the latter half of this book, the intensity of questioning life and it's meaning, of bonds and settling, of what one wants.

As I said in the begining, LGBTTP is a complex box to explain but it is fairly simple - it's unapologetically queer and bold!

I was incredibly impressed with this novel and with Salih’s mastery of language and story. It’s heart rending and so well told. Sebastian and Oscar’s choices, circumstances, opinions, values, and lives, prompt empathy, critical thought, and hold nothing back. It’s a brilliant honesty of feeling that I was so grateful for.

4 stars

Two adult gay men reckon with being part of the community now that's out and proud and more accepted in modern culture—with vastly different results. With a sharp focus on the generation of cis white men who grew up with the fear and the secrecy and never expected to be thrust into the mainstream, this was an interesting and thought provoking read.

Plot/Pacing: ★★★★ 1/2
Character development: ★★★★
Scope: Given the characters, this was focused on cis white gay men and their experiences

Sebastian and Oscar grew up as friends. Both gay, cis, and white, they experienced several early moments together and were relatively close. But as adults, they drifted apart.

In Let's Get Back to the Party, author Zak Salih invites us to tag along with Sebastian and Oscar as they go their separate ways in adulthood. While they started out with similar childhoods and share a gay cultural identity, the two have manifested those experiences very differently as adults.

Sebastian looks at the modern world around him in awe. A teacher, he finds himself increasingly obsessed with one of his young male students. The student has been out and proud for years, has a boyfriend, and has enjoyed being a gay man in modern America. Grappling with his odd place as being too old for that type of generational freedom of expression, Sebastian watches it unfold in the younger generation and muses on the pasts and futures of the gay community.

Oscar looks at the modern gay experience with more negative feelings. Seeing the assimilation of the community into the straight culture—and the number of gay men doing the "straight" thing and getting married and settling down—he sees the lifestyle that the community carved for themselves disappearing before his eyes. He becomes obsessed with the past, and fixates on a famous gay author's past works instead.

A deep dive into the complicated intricacies of generational loss and growth, Let's Get Back to the Party is a read that is hard to forget.

I really enjoyed the messy and complicated truths that the author presented for us in the archetypes of Sebastian and Oscar. While it's true that both of their experiences reflected the white, cis male gay experience and do not speak to the intersectionality at play in other conversations, this was still an intimate portrait of how modern times have fundamentally changed that community for better and for different. Really appreciated the read.

Thank you to Algonquin Books for my copy in exchange for an honest review.

Let's Get Back to the Party is the story of Sebastian Mote, a 30 year old professor who is single and envies his students that can live so freely. After meeting his old childhood friend, Oscar Burnham, he discovers the current gay culture and how, as they both get older, see the ever-changing world.

I did not finish Let's Get Back to the Party, stopping at 32%. I had been interested in Let's Get Back to the Party when first hearing about this but I found that it wasn't very plot strong and fell quite flat while reading. The plot felt rather simple, nothing really grabbing my attention. It felt like I was forcing myself to push through this book but nothing really interested me while reading this.

The characters seemed rather basic, their actions were lacking and it seems that they were the stereotypical cliche gay men that you hear about. While I would not know how gay men act, it just seemed like it was forced and it did not seem to work into the story.

While characters were engaging, I struggled with the formatting of Sebastian’s section. Why did Oscar’s chapters use quotation marks when someone spoke, and Sebastian’s didn’t? As a part of the emerging gay genre and recognizing the issues of marriage for gays. What I most enjoyed was the focus on what it was like to be a gay man today. Despite my irritation at the quotations marks, I am giving high marks to this book because it gives two different viewpoints on the marriage of two husbands and settling down to a happy domestic life.

I started this book with an open mind, but reading this book was more difficult to get through. I was not too fond of the writing preference to have Sebastian sections did not include quotation marks to indicate when someone spoke, but Oscar sections used quotation for dialogue. As a reader, the quotation marks help us following the conversation and distinguish it from descriptions. It allows the reader to enjoy the story instead of increasing our concentration to realize a thought and what was spoken by the characters during conversations.

I also could not connect with the characters. Both Sebastian and Oscar just annoyed me. They appeared to be two whining men who wanted things to change, but they continued to live the same way, expecting a different outcome. The ending just left me lost. Was Oscar in the water the whole time, and the "moment" with Sebastian didn't really happen? The book ends with Oscar in the water yelling for help, so does that mean he eventually drowns?

This book really was not for me. Thank you NetGalley and Algonquin for this free copy in exchange for my honest review.

Sometimes in my reading journey I come across a book that I just don’t vibe with. I’m not someone who needs to completely relate to the characters or who has to find something of themselves on the page. But sometimes the book I’m reading just doesn’t work for me. With “Let’s Get Back to the Party,” I was eager to read about the queer experience in today’s day and age. Instead, I got a book that was filled with sexual exploits that didn’t really do much to further the plot or to explain characters’ motivations.

The book is told from two alternating perspectives: Sebastian, a lonely teacher who becomes infatuated with one of his gay students, and Oscar, a man who becomes obsessed with a has-been writer. The two men were friends in childhood and continue to cross paths now that they’re both adults living in Washington D.C. Both are gay men who struggle to find love and connection. Sebastian desperately wants to find a partner to settle down with and Oscar is disgusted with conventional marriage (and thinks that straight people have commodified gay culture). Although they have interesting perspectives, their two obsessions take over most of the story (even though the reader is treated to a few flashbacks to their childhoods).

I really liked the two points of view because I enjoy when the same event is told from multiple perspectives (a la that Showtime show, “The Affair.”) And I thought the author did a great job fleshing out two characters who could not possibly be more different from each other. However, these factors weren’t enough for me to connect with the characters on anything more than a surface level. Plus, the addition of too much sex didn’t help me better understand the characters – just left me disconnected from the text.

I think this book could find an audience (especially with queer folks who can relate to a common experience) but I wanted way more substance.

“Perhaps experience without transformation isn’t experience at all. It’s just killing time. Then people around you start dying and you have no choice but to transform.”

Zak Salih’s heartfelt debut, Let’s Get Back To The Party is a provocative contemporary examination of queer life through the lens of two gay men, Sebastian and Oscar, who at times are as different as night and day and yet are each pursuing their own notions of what it means to be gay and proud out loud.

With alternating chapters highlighting the viewpoints of these two main characters we begin to see while on different paths, the commonalities in their shared struggles. There is trauma and love and growth even in their shared histories and that is ultimately the thing that Salih does well. He builds a diverse cast of characters who give insight to contemporary queer cultural identity. Specifically earmarking the complex role that envy plays in the lives of both Sebastian and Oscar and how they are both consumed by it.

Sebastian struggles to get over a long-term relationship that has ended and begins an obsession for his gay student, Arthur, who appears to have the life that Sebastian wishes he’d had growing up, confidently proud and aware. Oscar, on the other hand, seemingly at war with himself and a culture that is being normalized attempts to breathe life into an otherwise dying queer culture living by a set of hedonistic standards. “I vow, henceforth, to live by cock alone.” After meeting a once famous gay author who is knows for cataloguing his sexual conquests over the years, Oscar struggles with who the author was at the height of his career and who he is now and whether the changes he’s embraced render him a sell-out or true to being.

I think about the Pulse nightclub massacre and how it appears to be strategically placed at the end of the book and how it impacts the characters and helps bring this story into alignment with current day realities and what they mean for the LGBTQ community and world at large.

I enjoyed the book, the themes presented, and the interwoven character stories shared. A huge thank you to Algonquin Publicity and NetGalley for inviting me to participate in this tour of Let’s Get Back To The Party and for providing ARCs in exchanging for an honest review!

Publication Date: 2/16/21