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Title: To Have and to Hoax
Author: Martha Waters
Sub-genre: Historical
Trope(s): Marriage in trouble; enemies to lovers
So not going to lie, I definitely ordered this book because I needed another purple cover for my rainbow book shelf, and I was really just hoping it would be decent. Lucky for me, it was so much better than decent! It was thoroughly entertaining.
If you have read and loved You Deserve Each Other (as I did), this book is basically the historical version of that. Violet and James have been married for five years, but what started out as a love match has turned into a relationship that has been silently hostile for the past four years. Violet and James rarely engage outside of social appearances and have pretty much resigned themselves to never speaking again unless it’s absolutely necessary. But when Violet receives a message from James’s friend that he’s been thrown from his horse, she rushes to be by his side. Only to find out he’s already recovered and didn’t bother to tell her. So Violet decides to get her revenge by pretending she has consumption. What unfolds is basically the historical take on the Friends they don’t know that we know that they know episode. Violet and James continue to try to one up each other, leading to mostly a hot mess of experiences. But a hot mess that actually gets them talking and rekindles their passion.
What’s interesting about this book is that it plays with one of my least favorite things in romance: when the couple could easily solve their problem by having an open and honest conversation. In fact, James and Violet’s friends repeatedly urge them to just sit down and talk, but the two would rather continue their silly war than have an open dialogue. Something about the usually frustrating trope worked in this situation though, probably because their schemes were hilarious and ridiculous and amusing. I loved reading about their antics and it was fun to wonder what they were going to get up to next. This book was unlike anything I’ve read in historical before and I really liked the voice and the unique concept.
Overall Rating: 4.5 stars