Review Round Up (3): Scandals & Scoundrels

Sarah MacLean is the reason I fell in love with romance. Her Love by the Numbers and The Rules of Scoundrels were the first romance books I read and loved but somehow along the way I stopped reading her work. I recently fell back in love with her work thanks to Wicked and the Wallflower and I wanted more of her in my life. As I hadn’t read her Scandal & Scoundrel series before, I thought it would be best to remedy that! So today I have the review for the three books but unfortunately I didn’t love them all that much. This series goes to show that you could love certain works by an author but it doesn’t mean that you will love everything. Overall, I wasn’t as impressed with this series as other works by Sarah MacLean. I’m glad I got to read the series because I enjoy Sarah MacLean but it won’t be a series I’ll be returning to!

If I’m honest this wasn’t my favorite of the series. When I got half way through this book I was so tired of Sophie and King and thought to put it down before finishing. After having trudged through The Rogue Not Taken I have to say that it’s not a favorite at all. The constant back and forth between Sophie and King began as great banter but become tiresome soon afterward. One second they love each other and they’re reading to give in and the next they don’t believe a single word coming from their mouths. If you like to read a series in order (like me) I would caution you with this one. If you’re willing to skip a book in the series, I would highly recommend A Scot in the Dark and The Day of the Duchess instead. 

I liked A Scot in the Dark far more than I liked The Rogue Not Taken but I don’t think either will be on my list of favorites. Sarah MacLean is an excellent writer and I always enjoy her work no matter how I feel about the rest of it. I love that she is able to give each of her characters different personalities so it doesn’t feel like you’re reading about the same person over and over again. I love Scottish men so there was no doubt that I was going to love Alec. I didn’t end up loving him, sadly, but I did like him. While I liked Lily for the most part, I was annoyed half way through the book by her constant woe is me. By the time she finally moved on from it, the book was over and I was not satisfied. I loved meeting Lily and Alec and watching them fall in love but there was always something missing. Maybe it was because I didn’t like the conflict that Alex had for not wanting to be with Lily and vise versa. 

I loved the concept of this story but I didn’t love the execution as much. Communication is vital to making any relationship, romantic or platonic, work and the lack of communication is the biggest down fall between Malcolm and Seraphina. They don’t talk to each other and it’s beyond frustrating! Sure, the time period calls for a certain level of believability in the fact that they don’t talk to each other openly. But in order for me to believe that their bond was strong in the past, I want a believable story as to how they got there! All of the pitfalls in their love story could’ve been taken care of with a little bit more conversation and a lot less pridefulness between them. Yes, there needed to be tension in the story and I believe that tension could have come from other places in their lives.

**I will admit that I loved meeting certain characters in this series that play a bigger role in the next series that Sarah MacLean released! While I read that series before this one, I was glad to get their introduction none the less!**

Have y’all read any of the books in this series? Did you like them more than I did?