Books and Reading Wednesday- Mid-September Book Review!

The Scandal of the Season

Very pretty cover!

Goodreads blurb:

London, 1711. As the rich, young offspring of the city’s most fashionable families ll their days with masquerade balls and clandestine court-ships, Arabella Fermor and Robert, Lord Petre, lead the pursuit of pleasure. Beautiful and vain, Arabella is a clever coquette with a large circle of beaus. Lord Petre, seventh Baron of Ingatestone, is a man-about-town with his choice of mistresses. Drawn together by an overpowering attraction, the two begin an illicit affair.Alexander Pope, sickly and nearly penniless, is peripheral by birth, yet his uncommon wit and ambition gain him unlikely entrance into high society. Once there, privy to every nuance and drama, he is a ruthless observer. He longs for the success that will cement his place in society; all he needs is one poem grand enough to make his reputation.

As the forbidden passion between Arabella and Lord Petre deepens, an intrigue of a darker nature threatens to overtake them. Fortunes change and reputations — even lives — are imperiled. In the aftermath, Pope discovers the idea for a daring poem that will catapult him to fame and fortune

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This book is a fictionalised version of an actual historical event. A soon-to-be baron, Lord Robert Petre, seduces London’s beauty, Arabella Fermor, whilst he is also involved in a Jacobite plot to assassinate the Queen and put the exiled prince on the throne.

Sounds exciting, right?

It was supposed to be a sexy, thrilling story of a scandalous affair whilst being dangerous with all the Jacobite intrigue.

But when I got to the end I was just kind of like, ‘What actually happened in this book?’.

Don’t get me wrong, it was alright. It was a book I was happy to read, it’s just not much actually happened. It wasn’t all that exciting, the characters weren’t overly compelling, and the main romance wasn’t the romance I was interested in. I didn’t really care if Arabella and Lord Petre got together, I was much more interested in the blossoming relationship between Alexander and Martha, which was sweet and lovely and didn’t get as much attention as it deserved.

There were an abundance of characters and viewpoints throughout and sometimes, especially at the beginning, I struggled to keep up with the amount of characters being thrown at me. But I got there in the end and started recognising who was who.

The writing suited the time period the story was set for, and I did enjoy the fact that it was about real historical events. But again, not the most exciting event to write a book about, in my opinion.

I dunno, it was just not a book that I could get excited over or really involved in. The ending left me disappointed, as it just kind of ended without really wrapping things up.

What I did like most about the book was the Afterword, where the author detailed what happened to the people in real life after the events in the book, that was really interesting.

Overall, it was an OK read, I don’t regret reading it, but it certainly didn’t get me excited to find out what came next or really care about what happened to the characters throughout.

I would recommend it to those interested in this particular event and time in history, as you’d already have an interest in the subject.