Hayley Kiyoko's new novel "Where There's Room for Us" is set in a reimagined Victorian England where queer marriage is legal, but almost everything else is the same, right down to the paternalism that pervaded much of particularly upper-class society at the time. When I first heard the premise I was honestly a little skeptical; after all, misogyny and homophobia are extremely closely tied together, so I wondered how Kiyoko would handle writing a society where homophobia seems largely absent (or at least not enshrined in law the way it really was in Victorian times), but misogyny persists. As I read, though, I found myself pleasantly surprised by how the topic was addressed. Men who marry men and adopt male children are able to pass down titles, but women who marry women and adopt male children can't do the same. Women are still unable to vote or manage their own accounts, and there is still a sense of the "proper place" for a woman in society, regardless of who she marries.

And those expectations and proper places, especially as related to inheritance, end up becoming the very real stakes between Ivy, to whose American sensibilities these traditions seem quaint, and Freya, who feels a great sense of responsibility to her family to carry on their name and title. I appreciated that neither of them seemed to be obviously in the right, and while they come to agree on many topics, ultimately the aim is to strike a balance between taking care of yourself and taking care of your family, whether chosen or born.

I will say that stylistically, I'm not completely sure that the tone and the setting matched. Something about the vocabulary choice or maybe the syntax felt more modern than was strictly appropriate for the Victorian setting, and there were places that made me think "ah, these are Brits written by an American." But I think that's maybe something that will be addressed in a final round of editing, so I'm not docking stars for it.

Lastly, Kiyoko's acknowledgements mention her desire to create art that exemplifies queer joy, and I think she's done what she set out to do with this book. The stakes are real, and her protagonists are flawed, complicated people whose attitudes are informed by their upbringings, but at the end of the day the book is about the joy that comes at the end of the struggle. "We deserve to be happy even if we have to fight to get there" is a story that deserves to be told and a message that young queer folks deserve to hear.

I enjoyed this read, and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical sapphic romance without explicit scenes.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher!