Don't Want You Like a Best Friend is a fantastic mix of Bridgerton (Specifically Season Two/Book 2) and the Parent Trap....which was exactly how it was blurbed and honestly it is refreshing to have a book meet those expectations these days. To do so flawlessly? I'm happy as a peach.
This was SO fun and it was great to see different portrayals of parental/child relationships as they could have happened in Regency London - maybe it is just me but I don't feel like we see outliers like this very often. This very much reminded me of The Perks of Loving a Wallflower by Erica Ridley in humor/banter though it showed some relationship building much better. I will note, like Erica Ridley this title is NOT YA it very much situates itself in New Adult/Adult Romance just due to the spice levels.
Our main characters Gwen and Beth are lovely and sweet and 20-something which is lovely to see. This one really just begs for you to go in with little knowledge, but knowing the premise, because how everything unfolds is just delightful. I loved this and cannot wait for the next!

I don't come across many queer Victorian romance books, but when I do I go CRAZY for them. There's something about a couple knowing their love is forbidden, making doing whatever they can to make their relationship work because their love it so real. Especially when their love supported by the people around them and it doesn't turn into an awful homophobic plot line.

I wish there was a bit more build up to Beth and Gwen's feelings for each other. It felt a bit rushed, but nothing less I enjoyed it so much and I can't wait for the next book.

This was such a fun read! I love when romance books also include a subplot of hijinks and this is absolutely the perfect example of that kind of thing. Alban also does an incredible job of making Beth and Gwen realizing their feelings be a laughably long process, and I have to say it was nice to see a romance where the feelings are there but we get to see them develop instead of immediately jumping into a relationship. The main characters and their supporting friends and family were a joy to read about and there’s a great combination (in my opinion) of historical happenings and generally fun plot and character development. Overall it’s a fantastic addition to the sapphic romance category, and the foreshadowing of the ending has me absolutely locked in to the sequel coming out later this year!

Honestly one of the greatest things about this story is it feels so well-rounded, with great attention paid not only to the romance, but the development of the main characters, the overall Parent Trap-esque plot, side characters and their relationships, and everything within the rest of the story comes together into an absolutely lovely romance and a fascinating read. While I was originally drawn into this book by the gorgeous cover and the promise of a queer Victorian romance, the side-by-side romances of Beth and Gwen with their parents was so fun and made the story all the better.

Like I said, this is a fun read, but I also think it’s a good book. It’s historical romance without feeling too stifling and it’s a delightful world that Emma R. Alban has created. I’d definitely recommend picking it up!

First and foremost, I would like to thank harpercollinscanada & frenzy for the eARC of this amazing book.

I loved this book so much. It has become one of my fave sapphic romances.

This wonderful book is set in England in the year 1857 and is reminiscent of Bridgerton. There are promenades, seasons, and women needing to find husbands.

Beth’s mother is on the hunt to find Beth a husband or they will be out on the street. Time is precious but time is all Gwen wants. Gwen is on her fourth season (not that she cares) and still no husband in sight. Gwen is in no rush to get married as her dad is well off and he is in no rush as well to get re-married.

Gwen and Beth meet and instantly get along due to their not wanting to get married. They come up with a plan to get their parents back together after discovering that once upon a time, their parents were in love.

Somewhere along the way…Gwen and Beth fall in love with one another.

However, how can two women in 1857 make a love story work?

Gwen’s dad was the highlight for me. Why? He was so supportive of who his daughter was and just wanted her to be happy even if that meant not getting married. I also loved how taken he was with Beth’s mom. Gwen and Beth have such a cute friends to lovers story! I’m hoping that the next book that focuses on Bobby and James (James is Beth’s cousin, Bobby is Gwen’s) has some scenes with Beth and Gwen.

Parent Trap meets Bridgerton, and make it sapphic. Don't Want You Like a Best Friend has a heckuva fun hook, and the story definitely lives up to the hype! It's charming, heartwarming, and absolutely delightful.


It's Beth's first season, and she has just this one shot to snag a wealthy husband or else she and her newly-widowed mother, Lady Cordelia Demeroven, will be out on the streets. This is also Gwen's fourth season; she's pretty sure she's destined for a 'most seasons without a match' medal, and mostly amuses herself at parties by challenging friends and cousins to 'spot the heir and the spare' games.

When Gwen rescues Beth from an over-eager old man, both young women realize they'd much rather hang out together than deal with all the tediousness and stress of the season's endless social events. They also realize that their parents seem to be attracted to each other, and scheme to help them along towards their own happily ever after.

Beth and Gwen's relationship is really sweet. Even more than the physical attraction and the fun sexytime scenes, their friendship and desire for each other's happiness really shines through. These are characters who genuinely enjoy spending time together, and my favourite parts are when they're just having fun hanging out together and laughing at silly things going on around them.

For me, though, the main highlight of the book isn't the main romance, but rather the second-chance romance brewing between Beth's mother, Lady Cordelia Demeroven, and Gwen's father, Lord Dashiell Havenfort. When both were in their own seasons, they fell in love, but Lady Demeroven was in a similar situation as Beth, where she needed to marry rich to secure her family's financial stability. Lord Havenfort was heartbroken, and even though he went on to marry Gwen's mother, when his wife died, he never bothered finding a new one, and instead chose to remain a perpetual bachelor and lady charmer for the rest of his life.

Their meet-cute at the same ball where Beth and Gwen meet was just sparking with unresolved sexual tension, and their will they/won't they dance running parallel to Beth and Gwen's romance just stole the show for me. I absolutely felt for Lady Demeroven's desire to reunite with Lord Havenfort yet also secure her daughter's future with a wealthy match to another family. The man who eventually began courting Beth seems sweet enough, but his father is a total ass. Seeing through Beth's eyes the parallels between this potential future father-in-law and her own abusive father is heartbreaking, especially when she notices how much her mom makes herself small to feed this man's ego, just so she can secure Beth's future. I love how Beth pushes her mom to consider how their happiness (Beth's and her mom's) is more important than financial security, but I also understand why her mom would be afraid to make that leap. 

Lord Havenfort seems like a good man, and I sympathize for how much Lady Demeroven's fears keep happiness away from both of them. A member of the House of Lords, he's championing a bill to give women the right to divorce their husbands. This objectively makes him a hero, but on a more visceral level, it also makes him a personal knight in shining armour to Lady Demeroven and women like her, because if such a law had existed earlier, she may not have had to put up with an abusive marriage for so long.

Honestly, their romance just stole the show for me, and the big climactic moment between them just made my heart swell. I am so absolutely fantastically proud of Lady Demeroven, and so happy for them both.

I also really like how the novel explores the ways in which social conventions determine the options available to Beth and Gwen. It's illegal for two women to marry, and most couples in their situation make do with being friends who visit each other's estates and steal whatever moments they can for romantic encounters. Both Beth and Gwen struggle to come to terms with that restriction, yet as women, they couldn't really have careers on their own, and so need husbands for financial stability. This is especially true for Beth who doesn't have the security of Gwen's father's wealth.

The book highlights this theme with the two women servants who both work in the same household under different married surnames, but are actually a couple. Social snobbery works to their advantage, because most members of society don't bother paying enough attention to the servants to even notice they're romantically involved. One of them tells Gwen that this is the one time she'll admit that Gwen's wealth and social status puts her at a disadvantage, and I like how the story explores these kinds of nuances about privilege.

Overall, this is a fun, lighthearted, and feel-good book. The sequel, You're the Problem, It's You, featuring Beth and Gwen's cousins, also seems like fun. Both cousins' meet-cute at the end of Don't Want You Like a Best Friend showed a lot of promise for their chemistry together.

+

Thanks to Harper Collins Canada for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Omg!!!! Such a good book! It was very interesting and I really liked it! The vibes, the characters, the story!!! One of my new favorite definitely!

Included as a top pick in weekly January New Releases post, which highlights and promotes upcoming releases of the month (link attached)

what a fun debut!! this definitely will not be my last emma r. alban book.

historical romances aren’t typically my favorite thing to read but theres honestly not much about this book that didn’t immediately draw me in! sapphic, parent trap meets bridgerton and of course the taylor swift song lyric title!! (though thats where the ts things ends for my swifties that are considering just for that)

gwen and beth were super adorable, they were exactly what each other needed. gwen was so much fun and my heart hurt for her almost the entire time due to history repeating itself 😭 i was insanely surprised (good surprised) by the open door scene, i definitely wasnt expecting it but i absolutely loved it!!

i think that the 3rd act conflicts started a bit too early for my liking, the girls should have been able to have a little bit longer to sneak date imo but i do get why it was that way. a nice chunk of the plot revolves around a marriage act where women would be allowed to leave their husbands and i would have loved to see the girls more involved with it!!

all in all this was a super cute friends to lovers, its a little over dramatic but that was expected and its really fun ☺️

thanks to NetGalley for the eARC

⭐️=2.5 | 😘=5 | 🤬=2 | 18+

summary: Parent Trap romance…? the protagonists notice that their respective single parents seem to have some sort of past together so they try to set them up but then they?? fall?? in love?? also?? are we seeing the problem here?????? are we getting concerned??

thoughts: i was (initially) charmed by the anachronistic (like, reverse anachronism because it’s reminiscent of future eras, not older eras) elements; the only reason this is historical is so that there was drama with the MCs not being allowed to get married due to Victorian homophobia, big pretty hoop skirts, and some minor background political drama––otherwise, the dialogue and descriptions were so modern (characters saying “yeah” and high fiving, for example) it was kind of funny. the bodice ripper genre in general is not renound for its adherence to historical accuracy, though Don’t Want You Like a Best Friend was beginning to tax even my patience. however!! this traditionally accepted silliness did not translate well to other plotlines once the technically-not-incest thing got underway! normally it’s basically acceptable for i-guess-they’re-not-related romance to occur in bodice rippers and there is historical precedent for this kind of genuinely romantic tomfoolery in literature (see Austen’s Emma ), but with the characters acting so hilariously modern it was disturbing and came off as less sweet and more sweet home Alabama. like they literally refer to themselves as stepsiblings by the end. it is tonally disturbing and significantly less justifiable based on cultural context because the cultural context is so muddied with modern slang and vibes for the sake of audience relatability or something.

if you can stand Clueless without viscerally cringing, you’ll probably like this; the protagonists are genuinely cute (friends to lovers is so underrated) and there’s pretty decent conflict introduced (I looooove economic conflict in bodice rippers. it’s so specific to that genre I think it’s fascinating), though the pacing wasn’t perfect.

so. overall this is fine? I guess? but it does leave me wondering, like… why would you write this 😭 why would you write technically-not-blood-related sapphics when you can write literally? anything? else?? someone needs to inform Ms. Emma R. Alban that this is not the representation the LGBTQs are looking for.

this was such a refreshing romcom to have read!!! getting to read a bridgerton meets the parent trap sapphic romance wasn't on my bingo card for the year but I'm so glad it happened. everything about this book and its characters had me giggling with joy every time something worked out in their favor, both beth and gwen were such sweethearts to read about and follow along. this was simply a silly regency era romcom about two women falling in love with a taylor swift reference as the title and I couldn't have asked for anything more!

Delightful queer historical romance. It's definitely rooted in the styles and political issues of a certain year-- this is not a decade I read about often, but the more political side of the plot is handled well. Looking forward to the sequel.

Maybe period pieces just aren’t for me because this was boring. I didn’t find the romance all that enticing and the solution for how they end up together isn’t romantic at all either. At some point i forgot this book wasn’t YA and the spicy scene was kind of unexpected and honestly could have done without.

I adored everything about this book. A sapphic Bridgerton with a parent trap subplot and a political side plot to allow women to divorce bad husbands? Sign. Me. Up. I loved the dual POV for Gwen and Beth and watching their relationship unfold. There’s a lovely cast of characters and the story is so delightful. I was very emotional about the characters and their journeys! If you like breaking the mold, women’s right, sapphic romance, best friends to lovers and historical romance I highly highly recommend.

Thank you to Avon and Harper Voyager for the ARC!

Don't Want You Like A Best Friend is a fun, whimsical, sapphic historical romance full of hijinks, emotional ups and downs, and two happily-ever-afters you can't help rooting for. The descriptive nature of the clothing and environment of gave an honest yet humorous look into how difficult a women's everyday life could be during this time period. The characters are quite lovable from the two heroines to their extended families, I became invested in each unique relationship. The epilogue is intriguing enough that I am excited to see where the story goes in the next book in the series and can't wait to see these characters on the page again. The title with it's contemporary reference really captures the whimsy of the book, however, at times, I found myself pulled from the plot with some contemporary dialogue I wouldn't expect from a historical fiction book. Overall, I would recommend this book for historical romance fans as it is a refreshing approach to the genre, one that I have been eagerly anticipating and I am excited to see where the story goes in the sequel as well as any other novels Emma R. Alban will publish.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story. I loved our parents trapping main characters. I also enjoyed reading about their relationships with their parents. Emma wrote beautiful descriptions of the surroundings. I always get a little sad when reading LGBTQIA+ historical romance knowing that the couple will never be able to love each other openly. In the end of the story there are mentions of an idea that could give them the life they want together so I suspect we will be able to read how that turns out in the next book.

Definitely one of the best queer historical romances I've read so far, and I cannot wait to read the next in the series! Alban constructs lovable characters to root for. I plan to recommend this to anyone who inquires about historical and/or queer romance books.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this audiobook ARC in exchange for an honest review. Pub date: January 9, 2024

A sapphic faux regency romance in a contemporary voice, this had all the right pieces but left me yearning for more. I found myself more interested in their parents relationship than their own, and I often couldn’t distinguish between the two MCs.

Lesbian romance in a regency setting, with a smattering of matchmaking thrown in? This book checks all the boxes for me!

I found this book to be witty, fun, and surprisingly thought-provoking. I quickly fell in love with Beth and Gwen, and the side characters of their parents and friends were just as dynamic. Once I got settled into the book, it felt like I was watching a favorite TV show, full of life and good dialogue and depth. As Beth and Gwen struggled to find a way to foster their romance in a world where same-sex relationships weren’t even heard of, I wanted to cry with them, knowing that this was a reality for countless queer people throughout history. The author depicted this heartbreaking situation so well.

In addition to its well-written characters - which is always a win in my book - the book shows the uglier side of the regency era without hesitation. Though other media set in this time period (i.e. Bridgerton) clearly shows how women are dependent on men for security, this took a deeper turn, covering abuse, neglect, and the ramifications of divorce. I especially appreciated the attention that the author gave to day-to-day problems, like navigating hoop skirts, dealing with heat exhaustion at outings, etc. (Remind me to never try a hoop skirt!) This level of detail made the story so much more real for me.

The only drawback for me was the writing style, which took a bit for me to get used to. Personally I struggle with present-tense writing, and the first few chapters felt choppy to me. After the first quarter of the book, it felt like the author hit her stride, and the writing felt more natural. I’d urge anyone to keep going if they struggle with the writing style, as I did! Additionally, the parent/stepparent dynamic wasn’t my favorite solution to the MC’s romance (I much prefer what happened in the epilogue!) but I definitely didn’t get any incest-y vibes as other reviews have mentioned.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC. This is my honest review.

I honestly was wary going into this book because I've read so many cis straight white historical romances in my younger years and they all have a very similar formula. However, this one surprised me completely, in the best of ways. Gwen and Beth meet under fairly normal circumstances at the start of the season during the opening ball. They become fast friends (no instant physical attraction here but more of quick friendship chemistry) with the plan to help eachother during the season. Then they notice something odd between their parents (both are widowed).

After their parents split, draging each daughter off in a hurry for the night, both women discover that their parents used to be friends (with maybe something more brewing) when they were younger. Beth's mother broke Gwen's Father's heart and then married for money and security. But the love was real, and still there under years of denial.

This is a slow burn romance, but also the kind that I felt was truly friends to lovers. They don't skip the in-between, they even both have moments of discovery, that their reluctance to marry men, or even feel attracted to them, is because they are both lesbians. There is also a focus on the parents, their awful situation and how much the daughters care about their happiness. It doesn't take away from the central love story between Beth and Gwen but actually enhances it. They care so much about them that I became wholly invested as well.

The villian is very villiany, but in a subtle way at first (until it's not so subtle at all). The supporting characters are lovely and well developed too.

This book made me pine, cry, ache, and love so so very deeply. 1000% 5 stars, I cannot wait for the second one! I also read the audio in addition to this galley once it released and OMG that was fantastic too.

Emma Alban's "Do What You Like a Best Friend" is a captivating and delightful love story that enchanted me from beginning to end. This novel seamlessly weaves together elements of sexual tension, dynamic character relationships, and a heartwarming narrative about love and liberation.

The connection between the two main characters, Beth and Gwen, is established effortlessly from meeting at a debutant event. The chemistry between them sizzles with a perfect balance of authenticity and passion. What sets this novel apart is the romantic tension and the depth of the characters' personalities and challenges.

With her calm attitude towards societal expectations, Gwen's character provides a refreshing perspective on love and relationships. The contrast with Beth, who is pressured to marry for financial stability, adds layers to the storyline. The exploration of their struggles and desires enhances the overall depth of the narrative, making it more than just a typical love story.

The ending is a true highlight, wrapping up the story with a perfect blend of resolution and anticipation. The seamless transition into the following story is a testament to the author's skill in crafting a series. It left me eagerly anticipating the next installment, a mark of a truly engaging read.

The love story presented in "Do What You Like a Best Friend" is not only heartwarming but also empowering. It celebrates the authenticity of the characters and their journey to finding love on their terms. Emma Alban has created a romantic and socially relevant world, making this novel a standout in the genre. If given the chance, I would gladly forget this book to experience the joy of rereading it for the first time. It is a must-read for anyone who appreciates a beautifully crafted love story.