We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian – Soft Queer Longing in 1950s New York

A Love Story Between Headlines and Coffee Cups

Cat Sebastian’s We Could Be So Good answers a tricky question: how do you write a soft, hopeful MM romance set in a decade when queer love was criminalised, pathologised, and pushed into shadows? The answer, in this case, is to narrow the camera.

Instead of sweeping us through the entire Lavender Scare, Sebastian builds a world around two men in a mid‑century New York newsroom: one anxious, overworked reporter; one charming but directionless heir who has stumbled into journalism with more privilege than experience. Within the hum of typewriters and the smell of coffee, a friendship begins that slowly edges toward something neither man has words for at first.