LIKE IN LOVE WITH YOU

While competing for the same man, two ladies realize they would rather win each other.

The 1817 Season is in full swing in Bath, and as yet another ball begins, everything is going just as Lady Rosalie (and her mother) have planned. She looks perfect in her gown and has only two friends left to pair off with suitable men. And of course, she’s nearly engaged herself, to future viscount Mr. Dean, even though she feels no real passion for him. So it’s a shock when the Pine family, new in town, are announced at the ball and immediately begin to unravel their plans. Miss Catherine Pine and her mother seem set on snatching Mr. Dean away from Rosalie, and the women are soon circling each other carefully at one social event after another, intensely looking for opportunities to prove their superiority and eventually admitting to being at war. But Rosalie soon realizes that her strong feelings for Catherine actually remind her of how she felt for her first love, Jane, and Catherine starts to admit that what she feels for Rosalie is closer to what she felt during her first kiss with another girl. As their attentions turn away from their competition and toward each other, it’s easy enough for them to find an opportunity to explore their attraction physically. After all, who could object to two women taking tea together alone in a parlor? But though their mutual adoration develops into love, society does not offer any pathways toward the future they dream of sharing, and they struggle to find a path forward together. Alban’s latest Sapphic Regency romance, loosely based on Northanger Abbey, is a sweet and spicy enemies-to-lovers story, enhanced by copious details about life in Regency Bath that will forever influence how readers think about what it means to “take [the] waters” there. Alban’s ability to center the blossoming of a romantic relationship without minimizing the importance of friends and family is on full display here, granting the story an extra measure of complexity that heightens the intense connection between Rosalie and Catherine. Their happily-ever-after is perhaps a little too optimistic given the book’s setting, but readers will likely be too charmed to mind.

A witty and queer Regency romance full of fun references for Austen fans.