My 5-star review of Truth and Tinsel: A Marriage In Crisis Romance by Maya Alden. I am a big fan of Maya Alden and typically her books involve groveling, betrayal and some OW drama but no actual cheating. I believe this is her first cheating romance. And I’m here for it…

Truth and Tinsel: A Marriage In Crisis Romance by Maya Alden

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am a big fan of Maya Alden and typically her books involve groveling, betrayal and some OW drama but no actual cheating. I believe this is her first cheating romance. And I’m here for it.

SPOILERS BELOW

Mia and Aiden have been married for several years and all is not right in their marriage but Mia never thought Aiden would cheat on her until the day she sees him kiss another woman. Rather than confront him right away, Mia saves up her anger and has an epic type of revenge/meltdown on Christmas. I don’t want to spoiler anything from this as I think that reading through it is one of the best parts of the book.

Although the actual physical cheating is limited to a kiss and you might be tempted to question how bad that really was, I do not believe it was actually the kiss that ended up being the majority of the issue for these characters. Rather it was the circumstances that led to Aiden being in that situation where he was able to kiss another woman. He had made decisions during the course of his relationship that did not always put Mia first and threw him into close proximity with this other woman. And he also didn’t stick up for Mia in front of his family in the way that he should have.

And in a relationship there are two parties. While Aiden was at fault for his part of this, Mia also had a major failing of communication where she didn’t really stand up for herself in the relationship or make her displeasure of certain situations known. Maybe she was trying to be the supportive wife or not rock the boat. But the reality is it seemed like it just caused a giant build up of resentment in her that boiled in a massive way. Cheating books can go in all kinds of different directions but I really appreciated the grovel and work that Aiden did to turn things around and try to win Mia back. You have to read the book to find out how things end up!

I received this book as an ARC but I absolutely would have purchased it or borrowed it on KU both because it’s Maya Alden but also because I like reading these tropes. There aren’t even enough options in KU in this genre!

Trigger Warnings: Infertility, OWD, Cheating (Kiss), Divorce, Death of a parental figure
Tropes: Cheating, Grovel, OWD

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