I love a good queer historical romance, and having read that this one had f/f and trans rep in it as well as a central m/m pairing, I was pretty excited for it. I wish there were more queer historical romance books which weren't just m/m, and to give the author her due, although it's very much a side pairing, the other queer romance in this one is done well. I'd be happy to read a spinoff of their story. And you know, there was a lot of other stuff here that I liked a lot. The Victorian setting was done very well, with a lot of attention to detail that really worked, and I liked the protagonist and the fact that he's stuffy and a bit repressed and essentially a 70 year old man in the body of a 26 year old, because... same. I liked that he was also disabled, because we don't see a lot of disabled rep where the disabled character is allowed to be viewed in a romantic or sexual context without fetishisation. There was none of that here, which I appreciated.

However, despite only being 5 years younger than the narrator, the central love interest is very sheltered and immature; at one point, he essentially plays a game of hide and seek with a pal and gets chastised for it, and he's repeatedly described as being child-like, to the extent that the protagonist calls him 'lad' (truly the most erotic of pet names for one's beloved) about once every 3 pages, and it gave me very, very squiffy vibes. I can't root for a couple where one of them honestly doesn't seem to have the understanding of an adult for the majority of the book. The power imbalance was just too extreme. There were honestly times where I wondered if that character really had the capacity to consent because he seemed to be emotionally about 12. I considered DNFing this one, but it's only a short book, so I persevered. I'm not sure I loved where it ended, either; one of the (sex-related) elements of the protagonist's disability is magically restored at the end, which seemed like a cop-out.

I don't know. There were too many things here that squicked me out. I'd read more of the author's work and will absolutely be giving her a second chance, because her writing is genuinely lovely and the world-building is great, as is most of the characterisation, but this one had too many problematic elements for me to enjoy it as a romance. As a historical novel which is fully aware of its problematic content, maybe, but this one didn't engage with it critically and seemed to be romanticising things that I'm not sure are particularly healthy.

Content warnings for this book: mentions of rape, suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism, homophobia, physical abuse, sexual abuse