E.K. Johnston's That Inevitable Victorian Thing
All I knew about this book going in was a) the awesome title, b) the author, who I generally like, and c) it had a cool-looking cover. So imagine how delighted I was to discover this story takes place in an alternate world where Queen Victoria was apparently like "colonialism is dumb, let's unite the empire" and married her kids and grandkids off to rulers across the empire, instead of their European cousins. (It is unclear how this affected the Russian Revolution, though the United States are no longer so united.) Also she made it so her daughter could inherit the crown instead of having it go to a son. So now it is several generations later, and three young women are preparing for their debuts (because they still have those, whatever, let's just roll with it)--and one of them is secretly the Crown Princess, undercover. There is also a whole thing with a computer genetics/matchmaking system run by the Church of England. There is no way to describe this without sounding silly, I am starting to realize, but it is super charming and kind of fluffy over a steely interior. I wish to live in a world like this one (I initially typed “love” instead of “live”—that, too). A-.
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