The Two-Faced Queen

Petty spite and willful blindness with a cynical snarky out look. I get a certain almost noir tone of voice in my head when reading this novel. The characters here are extremely dysfunctional - they are driven by spite and grudges as much as anything else, and the results are somewhat predictable for much of the novel. Our main character moves from misadventure to misadventure largely due to misunderstanding and poor communication. The end result is a meandering story but there is a lot to like here. The love/hate relationship at the center of the story gives that enemies to lovers trope (kind of) and it does work as the driving force behind much of the story.

I enjoyed this, but I can see the characters could be jarring to some. For me the stupidity at times was almost endearing and played into that theme of spite in a way that worked well.