Great story with wonderful characters. Extremely well written. Fun to read and re-read. I will be reading more by Ms. Thorne.

I just want to say that the dialog and the relationship between Anna and Jacob is an absolute joy to read. THIS is good writing. It's snappy, witty, and sexy with attitude. This is how enemies to lovers should be.
Thank you to netgalley for the ARC. Opinions are my own.

The Plays the thing is a story about love, loss and redemption. Anna Smythe suffers a loss at a young age and is now focused on her family and finds solace in her Cricket Group. Her father, Sir John Smythe, reconnects with an old love who he was denied a chance to marry when the were younger and becomes engaged. The Smythe family is invited to spend time with the family of his betrothed so that they will get to know each other and Anna has to spend time with Jacob to prevent him from interfering with their parents having time alone as they are reuniting. As Anna and Jacob spend more time with each other, they find they actually enjoy spending time together until Anna's brother returns and brings back a secret that she has not share with Jacob. Will the fragile bond Anna and Jacob have be enough to hold their relationship together. Will Jacob be the man that Anna needs despite her feelings of inadequacy? A great story with a HEA for the main characters.

I received an ARC from Dragonblade and NetGalley and I am voluntarily providing a review.

The Play’s The Thing by Margaux Thorne is a Regency romance with a misleading title. It’s really about a female Cricket player in a time that women playing Cricket wasn’t really allowed. Miss Anna Smythe is such a lady and couldn’t help bu reread the article that sent her into fits each time. They were in a carriage on their way to the home of man who wrote it, Jacob Wright, who was no longer working at the newspaper as he had ascended to the rank of viscount, totally unexpectedly. All he wanted to do was be left alone, to think and to write. He even had a “hermit’s” cottage on his property for just such activities. The advent of Miss Smythe caused him no end of difficulties, while at the same time had him mesmerized. He went so far as to help publicize a Cricket workshop for young girls, which turned out to be a huge success. It was just the beginning.

These are two people with distinct personalities: well-written and interesting. It was not an easy relationship. Times were changing and people had to change with them, no matter how difficult. This plot, however unlikely, was beyond entertaining, giving these two people something to bond over. She didn’t always listen, nor did he, so it made for some entertaining bantering. The plot itself was entertaining enough. Not entirely different than most, but it did have that extra something. It was a very fun book to read, and had a few points that bear thinking on, even today. Thanks MS. Thorne for an entertaining read!

I was invited to read The Play’s The Thing by Dragonblade. All thoughts and opinions are mine. #Netgalley #Dragonblade #MargauxThorne #ThePlaysTheThing

The second book in the series with a foundation on cricket is intense and complex. Anna loves cricket and allows us to see how therapeutic it is given the various aspects of her life past and present. Jacob is a new Viscount who is a bit controlling based on his underlying desire to see his family happy based on his perception rather than theirs. Add in some other secondary characters who have both a past and a romantic interest in each other and you have a story that is fully engaging. There's some humor throughout along with lots of steam, excursions that should never have taken place during that time period. Enjoyable and introspective, a great series to read as a standalone or together.

Although this historical romance series is linked by the game of cricket, it will not affect your enjoyment if you have no interest in the game. The importance of the game for our heroine is more the benefit she gets to her mental health from her teammates and exercise.
Our hero takes his responsibilities as a protector very seriously. Some people don't appreciate that.
There are many lovely characters in this steamy story.
This is the second book in the series but each can be read on it's own.
Good fun.

Nothing is quite as complicated as a woman disillusioned by life and love, and a journalist turned viscount going head-to-head over their parents second chance at a happily ever after - not even cricket…

This is a hard one to review: a beautiful and heartwarming enemies to lovers romance - enthralling, humorous, emotional, a dour grump turning into a swoonworthy hero, a sunshine heroine struggling with dark clouds, splendid chemistry, steamy passion and a few CWs… but I fear giving away too much of this tale’s captivating plot by describing them.
I loved reading this book! It’s wonderful, fresh and original - as was the first book in this series. Perfectly flawed characters that get under your skin, and that sweet unpredictability that keeps you hooked until the end.

Anna is a baronet’s daughter - ruined by a youthful mistake - who found her voice and her strength in a single ladies cricket team, and now, when she’s finally facing her fear of love, her mistake returns to haunt her.
Jacob is a nobody with a difficult youth who unexpectedly inherited a title and had to quit his job, a man who cannot delegate, a storyteller with an investigative nature, a loner wary of the ton, a protector and a knight at heart.
Her dad wants to marry his mom - they were star-crossed sweethearts who found each other again after both being widowed. Anna is all for their union, and Jacob’s dead set against it. Thwarting the happy couple (him) and each other (her), they grow close...

And that’s about all I can say, but I’m going to leave you with this: a hermit’s cottage, one bed, lots of letters, an abundance of family, punching dough, an unbreakable sisterhood of friends, a travelling circus, a cricket clinic for girls, the strongwomen of England and their husbands, all the little things and if you love someone, set them free.
Just read the blurb, take a chance and jump in - you won’t be disappointed!

This novel is the second in a series of books about the members of a Victorian women's cricket club. I bought the first, hoping to read and review it before I read this ARC, but time flies, so here we are. However, as these are self-contained genre romances, they can be read out of order.

The story follows Anna, the nineteen year old middle child and eldest daughter of a baron, and Jacob, the twenty-nine year old newly-elevated Viscount Newton, brought together through the vagaries of time and fortune: now that they're both widowed, her father and his mother want to rekindle their once-thwarted romance.

At first, neither of their adult children are particularly keen on the idea; after all, these two haven't seen each other for a good three decades, what can they have in common now? Despite her initial misgivings, Anna is soon won over by the obvious joy her father feels in Mrs Wright's presence, as well as by the latter's sweetness.

For his part, Jacob is determined to protect his mother from the man who had already hurt her deeply once.His plan is to invite Sir John and his daughters to his country estate for a month, so that he may have the time and space to grill his mother's suitor to his heart content; if in the process he can stop the match altogether, all the better.

Shenanigans immediately ensue, of course.

Beware: stillbirth; death in childbirth; domestic violence; miscarriage; infertility; magic pregnancy; depression; explicit sex.

The book is narrated in third person, past tense, from the protagonists' points of view, with a lot of internal dialogue; my main problem with the story is the disconnect between what we are told about the characters, and their actual behavior.

We are told that Anna is very mature for her age, and there are hints from the start about some sort of terrible event in her past; the blurb mentions a "youthful indiscretion", and readers familiar with the genre can immediately guess where that goes: she was seduced and later abandoned. Later on it is revealed that she had a complicated miscarriage and developed childbed fever; between her lack of a hymen, and the doctor's prediction that she's unlikely to get pregnant, or to carry a pregnancy to term is she does, Anna has convinced herself that she has "nothing to offer" a man, and that therefore she'll never marry.

One would expect her then to be very circumspect in her interactions with men, no? Instead, she storms after Jacob to upbraid him for his rudeness, and later, after he makes a thoughtless comment, she goes to his bedroom to cajole him into accompanying her--alone, at night--in a surprise adventure, so that she can prove to him that women "can be strong" (they attend a travelling circus performance that boasts to include "the strongest woman in the world").

For his part, Jacob is suspicious of Sir John not only due to the history between their families, but also because of his own upbringing; the son of a minor twig in the Wright family tree, he grew in poverty. After his father died when he was but ten, his mother had to rent out rooms in their house, and even take in sewing jobs, to keep them both fed. Jacob started working young, eventually becoming a journalist; nothing in his life prepared him for the life and responsibilities of his title.

Since his accession, his experience with other aristocrats have all been mostly negative; most of them treat him like the outsider he is, if not with outright disdain; he doesn't want to expose his mother, or her sisters, to more of that if he can.

We are told that he is working hard to learn how to manage all the properties and money that he's so suddenly inherited, and that he has a hard time delegating to land stewards and other wealth-managing-type people. And yet, we never see him actually working; instead, much is made about how he spends a lot of time writing in a small cottage hidden in the gardens near the house.

Then there's the fact that it takes approximately two days to shift his focus from, "protect mother at all costs from these condescending aristocrats" to chasing after Anna.

And these two have the strangest, most non-sensical conversations about the difference between lust and love, even after he gives her an orgasm during a carriage ride, after they have spent several nights having sex all over the estate, and all the way to the big third act separation.

There is a lot happening in the story, but I didn't get a proper feeling of closure for most of it.

Cricket, both playing it and the women's club, pops up at various times, as the plot dictates--including being the 'cure' for Anna's depression, both after her miscarriage and after her seducer returns. Jacob's controlling attitude towards his mother and aunts is mentioned, but not quite addressed. Anna's and Beatrice's older brother David only exists to justify Phillip's presence. Sir John's unconscionable forbearance with the villain is explained away, but how that harms Anna is not addressed.

And even when the wastrel gets his comeuppance, it's off page--and it involves putting a seventeen year old Indian girl, whom he married for her dowry and subsequently passed off as his mistress to his cronies before abandoning her there, in his household and at his mercy in England.

I also struggled with the writing itself; some of the word choices are very awkward. Jacob's aunts, both in their forties, are referred to as "the girls". Beatrice refers to the Smythe house as "dour", making Anna wonder if their home was "anemic" in the same conversation, leaving me befuddled, and generally dissatisfied with the whole book.

As I mentioned at the top, I have the first book in the series in the TBR, and hope to give it a try soon-ish, see if it works better for me than this one did.

The Play's the Thing gets a 6.00 out of 10. (And no, I still don't know how the title relates to anything in the novel)

3.5 stars

The Play’s the Thing is the second in Margaux Thorne’s Cricket Club series. While this second edition had much less focus on the Cricket club and its fellow ladies, the comradery between the Single Ladies’ Cricket Club is still a charming addition to the story.

This second book follows Anna, the daughter of Sir John, a widower who is determined to marry his first love. However, Sir John’s first love, Rose, has a son who has recently become a Viscount and believes that Sir John’s affections are a result of Rose’s new standing in society. Jacob, the new Viscount, is determined to foil Sir John’s plans by having Sir John and his family live at his home for a few weeks. During this time, he plans to convince his mother that Sir John’s is just a money hungry society climber.

As Anna tries to prove Jacob’s misgivings about her father incorrect, a series of adventures ensues, including a circus visit, a few stolen kisses, lots of baking and lots of sparks between the two.