The pitch for Drag Prince Charming by BA Huntley: conflict-averse lesbian takes her girlfriend’s drag persona to meet Mom to avoid homophobic drama. The execution wound up being pretty cute and low-stress. Push past the slightly awkward, narrated beginning to get to some chemistry that really flows, both between the protagonist and her flock of sisters, and between the protagonist and her love interest. I read a ton of romance and it’s made me fairly picky about how well the couple ‘clicks’–this one passes the click test for me.
And urgh, I don’t know if this is appropriate for a lesbian romance review, but I’m bi, and the love interest’s entrance in male drag was thud-swoonworthy for me. “Mateo” isn’t just male-presenting but suave, seductive, and swanning around in a fancy suit. Bear in mind that this is a lesbian romance that includes a woman who plays with gender presentation, not a trans m/cis f romance, but the scenes with Renata presenting male–including packing–totally made my Cis Wife bells ring.
A sample of the sisters’ banter:
“It’ll kill Mom,” Emma groaned. “We’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Come on, we never hear the end of anything,” Charlotte reminded her.
There’s an adorable old lady living next door, too. I like all of these characters and I was happy to spend the story’s short span of time with them.
By the way, this is one of those elusive “chubby main character who doesn’t lose weight” f/f stories people have been looking for. That was cool!