Don't Want You Like a Best Friend by Emma R. Alban is a fun and funny Victorian era queer romance. It follows two debutants who are trying (sometimes not very hard) to find husbands amid the high pressure noble society of Victorian England.

Beth and Gwen come into the season with very different motivations and experiences. Beth is on her first season, and needs to find a husband by the end of the summer so that she and her recently widowed mother can have a place to live come autumn. Gwen is the wealthy only child of a playboy Lord who has been avoiding a match for four years, and hopes to make it out of another season unbothered.

The two meet and become fast friends, especially once they realize that they may have found an answer to all of their problems: a match between their parents.

Can the co-conspirators convince their parents to look beyond the hurt feelings of seasons past and see the potential they have with each other? And what happens when romantic feelings emerge from an unexpected source...one another?

I enjoyed the fact that this book acknowledged the visible and invisible ways in which lesbian relationships existed across different classes during the time period. Because female sexuality was seldom discussed or acknowledged in Victorian society, Sapphic relationships were often overlooked and ignored. This was especially the case when compared to the aggressive anti-gay legislation that was popular at the time. Conversely, women were unable to hold property, file for divorce, or inherit wealth.

Much of the social pressures among the upper class of the era surrounded the importance of producing a viable (read male) heir to ensure that wealth could be passed down within a family. Beth's story of being put out of the house and property after her father's death in favor of a male cousin was a real concern of women of the era.

These laws and traditions are instrumental in setting up the circumstances of both Beth and Gwen, as Gwen's father was initially not the heir to the fortune he ultimately inherited, but only became wealthy after the death of several other family members ahead of him in precedence. His poor prospects are what initially led to Beth's mother rejecting him roughly 20 years ago in favor of a more advantageous but unhappy match.

Alban uses more modern language to convey her ideas rather than trying to stick to the more flowery phrasing of the time, and I think the book is funnier and easier to read because of this.

Emma Alban plans to continue this series, likely next focusing on a male couple. I look forward to her treatment of the different circumstances between the gay and lesbian protagonists.