“We all make mistakes, Cassandra. Some of us are merely forced to pay more for them than others” – 2.5/5 stars!

Attention! This book contains: letters, old friendships, lies, silly shenanigans, war traumas and blond curls.

CAN A SCANDALOUS CHARADE

For seven long years, Lady Cassandra Monroe has waited for the man of her dreams to return from the war. Unfortunately, he happens to be engaged to her flighty cousin. What Cass wouldn’t give to take her cousin’s place! When he mistakes Cass for Patience Bunbury, a fictitious friend her cousin has invented to escape social obligations…even with her future husband, Cass thinks this is her chance.

LEAD TO TRUE AND LASTING LOVE?

After defeating Napoleon at Waterloo, Captain Julian Swift is not quite ready to settle down and enter into his unwanted arranged marriage—especially when the real object of his affection turns out to be a beguiling beauty he meets at a party. Patience Bunbury is witty, independent, passionate…and, unbeknownst to him, the cousin of his current fiancée. When the truth about Cass comes out—and Julian discovers that their courtship is anything but accidental—will he surrender his heart to a woman who really is too good to be true?

This book… omg. I initially gave it 3 stars, but I honestly can’t keep that evaluation. What went wrong here? Let’s get into it!

The main problems I had with this book were the boring main characters and the nonsense plot. If you don’t know, this book is basically built entirely on a pointless lie that is told in the beginning. So, as you can imagine, instead of developing the romantic relationship naturally, the MCs build their romantic relationship on a lie. It’s not an irreversible kind of lie too, it’s just pointless and nonsensical to the context of the book.

There were some good things about this book though – mostly the female friendships like I previously talked about in the first book -, but since the main focus here is romance, I was disappointed.

C’mon, let’s be real here: was all of that really necessary? The entire story of the book based on a weird lie that makes zero sense to the story? What was even the point of this book? I feel like it would be great if we could just follow Julian and Cassandra’s love story as it would naturally be. None of the lies told were necessary and I’m sorry but I couldn’t get past that in the book. Like Gordon Ramsay would say: “it’s bland, tasteless and undercooked… what a shame.“

Not gonna lie, I’m starting to lose hope, but I will remain strong! Next book is about Jane (whom I love) and I’m hoping that her romantic story will be as good as her character is. Fingers crossed.