Welcome to another LGBTQ book review! All reviews touch on genre/plot, tropes (if any), quality of LGBTQ content, and avoid most spoilers. Catch up on my last book review of The Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune. You can find all LGBTQ book reviews here.

Don’t Want You Like a Best Friend: LGBTQIA Book Overview

Genre/Plot

Two debutantes look for husbands at their parents’ request in Victorian England. Neither Beth nor Gwen is particularly interested in finding husbands, but when they recognize a spark in Beth’s mother and Gwen’s father, the two devise a mischievous yet benevolent plan to get the two together.

Characters/Relationships

Beth lives with her mother after her father’s passing. She never really liked her father, as he was a misogynistic and emotionally abusive husband. It takes a while for Beth to understand her feelings for Gwen are romantic.

Gwen lives with her single father. She is used to (and enjoys) her solitude, hardly giving any man a chance for marriage for four seasons in a row. And she would certainly prefer it that way.

Through friendship, the pair develop romantic feelings for each other that come to the surface over time.

Additionally, Gwen’s housekeeper lives with her partner, who is also a woman.

LGBTQIA content assessment

For its time, Don’t Want You Like a Best Friend does a solid job of avoiding homophobia (internal and external) without being too unrealistic. This is Victorian times, so it’s not exactly a contemporary happily ever after, but it comes pretty close.

Don’t Want You Like a Best Friend: Some spoilers

I have to admit, I wasn’t a huge fan of this book. I’m not always a romance fan, and I think that was part of it. The Victorian Era also wasn’t quite doing it for me. The chemistry between Beth and Gwen felt a little lacking. I’m a huge fan of the friends-to-lovers trope, but this just didn’t quite live up to the painful longing in my opinion. The plot also focused a lot on their parents, which I guess I wasn’t a huge fan of.

That being said, the LGBTQIA content passes the test for sure. Also, the relationship between Beth and her mother was an interesting dynamic to explore. Beth constantly pushed against her mother’s acceptance of a limited, patriarchy-controlled life, while the mother expressed that she didn’t have the tools in her girlhood to hope for anything more than what she got. It reflected something in my own relationship with my mom, which came at a time when I needed to hear it, so I’m definitely grateful for that.

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