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Title: Slightly Scandalous
ISBN: 0440241111
Author:
Mary Balogh
Publicate Date: 2003-06-03
Publish: 2003-06-03
List Price: $6.99
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Mass Market Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $1.30
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $0.01
Amazon Merchant Price: $6.99
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Not as good as other Balogh titles
I have had the pleasure of reading several of Balogh's other titles, but this is my first foray into the Bedwyn family. While I did enjoy the book, I found it to be repetitious. Everything was "haughty". Freyja had a haughty tone, a haughty manner, haughty expressions, she conducted herself haughtily. By the time I finished reading the first few chapters, I was heartily sick of the word "haughty".
And apparently, in order to make the reader believe that Freyja is spirited and strongwilled, she must punch people in the nose. It was amusing the first time because it could be deemed unexpected. But after she punched the hero twice, and tried to smack him a few other times, it got silly. By the time she decks the marchioness, instead of being the satisfying scene that it should have been, it was just tired (it didn't take a rocket scientist to see that punch coming from a mile away).
There are other repetitive devices throughout... Josh grins and winks alot... Wulf isn't just cold and aloof, he's wooden, and seems to be having a love affair with that quizzing glass...the marchioness is shrill, simpers and falsely appears weak despite the fact that no one seems to fall for her act. And just how many times do the various Bedwyn siblings have to verbally state their superiority? "We ARE Bedwyns"... I kept waiting for someone to add "Hear us roar" every time someone said that.
Despite how it might sound, I actually enjoyed the story for the most part, but it pales next to many of other Balogh's other works. I am still curious to see how other Bedwyn titles pan out even though I found this one to be subpar.
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2: Taming of the Shrew
If you've been following the Bedwyn series, you'll already know Lady Freyja Bedwyn. Haughty, shrewish, with the prominent Bedwyn nose and, at best, referred to as 'handsome', her best feature is her family name and wealth. She's refused suitors galore and frozen others out long before they've had a chance to get close to proposing. Up to this point, you might be forgiven for thinking that she doesn't have a lot to recommend her as a heroine. You might be forgiven for actively disliking her.
Balogh goes some way to change readers' perceptions of Freyja in the first chapter. She's travelling to Bath, to stay with people she doesn't really like very much, but then she doesn't want to be anywhere near the Bedwyn family home at the moment because their neighbours, the Ravensburgs, are about to have their first child... and Freyja was all-but jilted by Kit Ravensburg (A Summer to Remember) and she hasn't yet got over that. En route to Bath, her bedroom is invaded by a man who begs her not to reveal his presence and then hides in the wardrobe. She doesn't give him away, but when he kisses her she gives him a bloody nose. Well, we find out that she's no shrinking violet, certainly. Next, we get an intriguing glimpse of her visiting a school to enquire after its well-being and being sent away with a flea in her ear by the owner... who we discover was a former governess of Freyja's and whom she treated badly. Unknown to the governess, Freyja has been secretly funding the school ever since - another insight into her character.
Freyja's mysterious inn encounter turns out to have been with none other than Joshua, the Marquess of Hallmere. They clash again in Bath, but then begin to find that they actually enjoy each other's company. Then, as Joshua is being actively pursued and almost compromised into marrying a cousin, Freyja agrees to 'rescue' him by pretending to be his fiancee, an arrangement they will call off once Joshua feels safe. All's well that ends well - until someone gossips in the Duke of Bedwyn's hearing. The Duke hurries to Bath to find out what his sister is up to and insists that she bring her fiance home to meet the family. All is still well, as they plan for Freyja to break off the engagement with some excuse later... and yet she doesn't. When Joshua finds himself accused of murder, Freyja and most of the Bedwyns decamp to his home to help him clear his name, and he and Freyja are even more cast into each other's company. Can Freyja trust Joshua enough to overcome her determination that he's not a good husband? Does he really want to marry her anyway, or is he just teasing?
By this time, I was getting a little tired of the 'fake betrothal' plot; we've had it three times, what with A Summer to Remember, Slightly Wicked and now this book, plus the marriage of convenience in Slightly Married. Yet I should have trusted Balogh. The execution of the plot isn't at all cliched, and the characters sparkle. It didn't take me long at all to feel empathy and then liking for Freyja - if you're tired of prim-and-proper heroines, then she's perfect. She's forthright, which means she puts her foot in it, but her heart's in the right place. Joshua is irreverent, with a huge sense of fun, which leads Freyja to think that he can't take anything seriously - which isn't true, but he enjoys letting her think that it is. Their dialogue sparkles, and Joshua himself is a worthy hero. Probably the best of the first three books.
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3: Balogh has series issues with originality
Again, I have to play both sides of the coin, as I have done with the other Balogh books that I have read. I've got some good things, and some bad things that I can say.
Overall, the book wasn't too bad. I ended up not disliking Freyja as much as I did in the previous books, but I still didn't quite like her. She was a bit too much of a snob. I really enjoyed Josh, though. The romance was fairly nice between Josh and Freyja, and the overall storyarc made sense and all that. I liked the parts surrounding Josh's family. It added some nice depth to the story. So yeah, overall, I didn't mind the book so much.
On the flip side of the coin, I became increasingly aware during reading the book, that Balogh really likes to recycle her own ideas. It got annoying. Part of the main hook in the book was a fake betrothal between Freyja and Josh. That was by far not original for Balogh, and especially this series. In the prequel, A Summer to Remember, Lauren and Kit do the exact same thing for pretty much the exact same reasons. And in Slightly Married, Aidan and Eve enter into an almost fake marriage - one of convenience. So having that same hook used for Slightly Scandalous was tedious and repetitive.
And even aside from that Balogh, has a tendency to recycle even simple things. The characters tend to have almost the exact same thoughts or phrasing on something that should be original to them. And she's ended the books almost all the same. I think it was in A Summer to Remember where Lauren speaks about the sea, calling it wild and uncontrollable..and all these other more poetic descriptions. Then in Slightly Scandalous, Freyja says almost the exact same thing. It struck me as ridiculously unoriginal. She also likes to have her characters say something like "no, I do not want happily-ever-after; I just want happiness" or something to that effect. It's a nice line, but having too many characters in too many books repeat it takes away it's effectiveness. Then there's the endings of the books. They all seem to end with a wedding scene followed by the bride and the groom standing outside the church before all the revelers, wondering if they should just mosey on along to their carriage, or whether they should make a spirited run for it. It was cute the first 1 or 2 times...but as an ending to every book? Not so much. It's unrealistic and silly. And one of the biggest annoyances? The use of the word "haughty". I'd hate to see a word count of it. It'd be astronomical. I think the word comes up in every sentence Wulf is mentioned, and if not haughty, then cold. By the end of Slightly Scandalous, I wanted to bang my head into a wall.
I think if a person read the books in the series over a longer course in time, instead of one after another like I'm doing, these things could probably be overlooked. But when read quickly together, the faults really stand out. Even so, it wasn't really a bad story. I didn't mind it so much.
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4: Good read...
This book is great. I love Freyja she is such a spit fire. And Joshua needed to get his keester hit a couple times by Freyja. This book is funny and cleaver. I would recommend it to anyone.
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5: The excellent third book in the Bedwyn Series
Although very much a fan of Mary Balogh's Regency romances I have been a little disappointed in some of her more recent books, mainly in the "Slightly" series. Chronologically "Slightly Married" (the story of Aidan) and "Slightly Wicked" (Rannulf) come before this book, although "A Summer To Remember" introduced this family. In many of these books Lady Freyja appears and she was always a character I found difficult to like - she was positively nasty to the heroine in "A Summer To Remember" and seems to go around punching people; not very endearing.
Slightly Scandalous is Freyja's story and it's actually very good. It starts off as she is on her way to Bath to stay with a friend, ostensibly to be social but really to get away from her home and her neighbours as Viscount Ravensberg, the man she loved, is expecting a child with his wife (the characters from "A Summer To Remember"). Despite these events having happened almost a year ago Freyja is most certainly not over them - Bedwyns love only once, of course, and she loved Kit Ravensberg. What hope is there for her future?
But in Bath, and in fact before, she bumps into Joshua Moore, Marquess of Hallmere, who seems to be about the only man who can match her in fun, humour and derring do. They have great fun together (despite Freyja's lamentable tendencies to punch him in the nose) and it ends up that they will both help each other out by a fake betrothal. But fake betrothals are rather difficult to handle when people get more and more involved, especially when one of the two is accused of murder.
This book was excellent in terms of plot and character. Joshua, Marquess of Hallmere, slowly reveals to Freyja that he's not just a wastrel laughing lad but also has hidden depths. Freyja is revealed as someone who can have her heart broken and who has her own secrets - some of which are very honourable (she is the benefactress of a school, which is the school featured in the most recent "Simply" series). The rest of the Bedwyns make quite a showing in this book - it's evident that Mary Balogh loves these, her creations, but I find them a little trying at times. Still they worked well in this book, even Wulfric, who sometimes seems too cardboard a villainous character.
My reservations about this book were its similarities to "A Summer To Remember" - fake betrothal etc. Also I couldn't separate out the characters of Kit Ravensberg and Joshua Hallmere - they seemed almost identical; if I were Josh I'd worry his wife was trying to find the man most like her lost love. But these are minor niggles in what is otherwise an excellent story and something for the keeper shelf.
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