January is the month for second chances, so it’s fitting that this year’s first book is one I had to try twice before we clicked.
In Emma R. Alban’s historical debut, DON’T WANT YOU LIKE A BEST FRIEND (Avon, 400 pp., paperback, $18.99), the shy debutante Beth and her recently widowed mother have one season in which to find Beth a match before they must yield their townhouse to the estate’s heir.
Beth quickly makes friends with another debutante, the mischievous, confident Gwen, whose widower father has been pining for Beth’s mother ever since their long-ago affair. And so a double romance begins, with the girls falling in love with each other while scheming to reunite their parents. But when a young earl’s son starts courting Beth, she has to choose between a marriage for security and the unconfessable love of her heart.
The book is pitched as a Sapphic “Parent Trap” set during the Victorian era, but I found it to be a 1960s Technicolor spectacle of Victorian courtship, complete with buoyant teeny-boppers, a widow with all of Maureen O’Hara’s mournful glamour and an Ascot race scene straight out of “My Fair Lady.” It’s perfectly bonkers and shows more fidelity to Taylor Swift’s lyrics than it does to actual historical sources, but the sheer exuberance proves irresistible.
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