How To Spot a Fake: Heiress Loveyln inherited her grandmother’s lake side mansion and artwork and dreams of turning the house into a world-class museum. She just has to get her father and the board of the family foundation to support her. She hopes authenticating a Faberge egg, long thought missing, will sway them. She emails the information to John Smith, the leading Faberge expert for help, or so she thought. Instead, her email reaches a different John Smith, though one who does have an interest in missing art. The two begin working together on the egg and the museum, quickly becoming close. But what happens when the case of mistaken identity is revealed?
I accidentally started this on the Monday before Thanksgiving, the same day the story starts, which was serendipitous. Now, I’ll be honest, the first chapter didn’t fully grab me. But I’m so glad I kept reading! Sometimes that happens! A lot of this book is very…interior. It took me a bit to lean into it, but I actually love it. I loved being so fully in the characters thoughts. It felt very realistic, both John and Love going over and over their worries in their minds, trying to talk themselves into and out of decisions.
HTSAF is a romance, but much of the actual relationship between Love and John is off the page. There is a lot of yearning and amazing chemistry, but nothing really happens until the end. I think this worked really well for the story, and showed the trust between the characters, a trust that wasn’t, perhaps falsely, bolstered by a physical connection. Speaking of trust, I appreciated that the conflict was based solely on mistaken identity with no lying. Love and John are both sort of naive and could have asked each other literally any question, but whatever. No one lied, and I really liked that!
Thanks to LibraryThing for the ARC!
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Overall, this was a cute, sweet romance. I only have two real complaints, and I'll get them out of the way first, as they happened at the start of the book - a practically ancient telephone number that is somehow still in use and connects to the right place, and a supposedly prestigious company using a generic email account, making it easy for the email to go to the wrong person. It's pretty cheap to get an email tied to your website address, so this made no sense at all (to me). Now that that's out of the way, the things I loved - Lovelyn is a great MC, she's smart, strong, and trying to be independent while fighting against an overbearing family. John is a great character, and I loved him from the moment we first meet him. The story itself moves along pretty smoothly, and other than that hiccup in the first chapter, things felt like they unfolded fairly organically. The plot moves along smoothly at a good pace, but not so fast that it feels rushed. ( )