Reviewed by Ro
TITLE: The Hot Chocolate Hoax
SERIES: Sweet Deceit #1
AUTHOR: E.J. Stoll
PUBLISHER: Self Published
LENGTH: 240 Pages
RELEASE DATE: November 13, 2025
BLURB:
Moving back home to join the Green Mountain Ballet Company came with numerous perks. Better pay, bigger roles, and the chance to dance on the same stage where I first fell in love with ballet. It has a few notable drawbacks as well, like my family’s interference in my personal life. When my mom won’t stop pestering me about dating, I do the only rational thing: invent a boyfriend.
The problem with fake boyfriends is that they’re not real, which means bringing them to a holiday function is a challenge. Enter my childhood best friend, Aidan. We might not be close anymore, but that doesn’t stop us from hatching a plan. We’ll pretend to date through New Year’s to keep everyone happy. Once the holidays and Nutcracker season are over, we can break up (and remain friends, of course).
It’s a foolproof plan, so why does it feel like I’m ruining everything?
REVIEW:
Aidan and Covey have been friends since kindergarten, but the friendship sort of drifted away when Covey moved away to pursue his dream of ballet. Now Covey is back in his Vermont hometown and has a job with the Green Mountain Ballet company. While he loves being back, what he doesn’t love is the immense pressure from his family to find a partner.
“What I didn’t anticipate was the interference from my family. The minute the plan landed, they started bugging me about settling down. Literally. It was on the drive from the airport to my rental house that the topic first came up. Give a guy a few days. Ddi they expect me to meet someone at baggage claim?”
Now that he can’t hide he can’t handle it. So he does what any crazy person would do, and he invents a boyfriend. He digs in even deeper when she tells Covey to invite his (imaginary) boyfriend to dinner and he agrees, knowing it isn’t possible. Except then there is a very believable coincidence, and a very believable misunderstanding by mom, and viola, Covey and his old friend Aidan are now fake boyfriends.
Aidan has always followed Covey on his ideas, and Covey has been there for him. “Covey always figures something out. For once, I wanted to be the one who saved the day for him. The one who got him out of a mess. God knows he’s done it for me dozens of times.”
And so begins the faux romance of Covey and Aidan, who honestly don’t even really know each other that well anymore. They meet up, attend meals at Covey’s parents’ house, and try to pretend no feelings are happening, even after Covey’s friend, Leo, and Aidan’s friend, Silas, try to shake some sense into their respective heads. I loved both Leo and Silas, loyal, solid friends.
Aidan is a kindergarten teacher, and having been one, I completely got it when they talked about the classroom and it made me smile. “My classroom is kept spotless. When a bunch of germ factories are touching every surface, it’s essential that things are wiped down multiple times a day and items are returned to their correct places.” Can’t even stress how essential that is (and we end up getting sick all the time anyway. I also had to smile when Covey and Aidan talk about the difference between Covey’s classes as professional development, and Aidan’s idea of it.
Because Covey is in the Nutcracker, which is stressful and time-consuming, they don’t get as much time together as they need, making it harder to re-know each other. I was shocked at the big Thanksgiving scene, because I expected Covey’s extended family to be better than that. Some of them were outright jerks.
I had a hard time rating this one, because I liked Aidan, I liked Covey, I loved the background of the ballet, and I loved the kindergarten aspect of it. What was my problem then? The “I can’t tell him and ruin our friendship” went on way too long for me. There were times when I felt Aidan was being unfair. “Three days, four performances, and zero messages from Aidan. Not talking to him feels like a terrible punishment. I only wish I knew what I did wrong.” I get it, there’s a lot riding on this and it’s confusing, but speak! For his part, sometimes Covey assumes things that are not how it really went. Again, speak!
The reason for the title had a double meaning and I loved that.
RATING: 
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