RITA Reader Challenge Review

Do You Want to Start a Scandal by Tessa Dare

This RITA® Reader Challenge 2017 review was written by Winnay. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Short Historical category.

The summary:

On the night of the Parkhurst ball, someone had a scandalous tryst in the library. Was it Lord Canby, with the maid, on the divan? Or Miss Fairchild, with a rake, against the wall? Perhaps the butler did it.

All Charlotte Highwood knows is this: it wasn’t her. But rumors to the contrary are buzzing. Unless she can discover the lovers’ true identity, she’ll be forced to marry Piers Brandon, Lord Granville—the coldest, most arrogantly handsome gentleman she’s ever had the misfortune to embrace. When it comes to emotion, the man hasn’t got a clue.

But as they set about finding the mystery lovers, Piers reveals a few secrets of his own. The oh-so-proper marquess can pick locks, land punches, tease with sly wit . . . and melt a woman’s knees with a single kiss. The only thing he guards more fiercely than Charlotte’s safety is the truth about his dark past.

Their passion is intense. The danger is real. Soon Charlotte’s feeling torn. Will she risk all to prove her innocence? Or surrender it to a man who’s sworn to never love?

Here is Winnay's review:

Two years ago one of my favorite podcasts, NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour, dedicated an entire episode to romance novels. The host, Linda Holmes, was joined by two other NPR reporters and Smart Bitches’ own Sarah Wendell. The episode was 45 minutes of discussion of the romance genre and its many sub genres. I always enjoy the show, but what really impressed me in this installment was the uproariously good time the panel was having. They had an infectious enthusiasm for the books and authors they were discussing, and though I’d had limited exposure to the romance genre before, the hour had barely finished before I was checking out Amazon for their top picks. Near the end of the podcast they started rattling off their favorite authors when one of them simply paused and said “Tessa Dare”, at which point all the others exclaimed “TESSA DARE!”, and with such reverence I chose her as my gateway into the world of historical romance.

The first Dare offering I read was Romancing the Duke, and she won my heart pretty early in the book when the hero describes the (unconscious) heroine’s hair as thus, while checking her for injuries:

He thrust his fingers into her upswept hair, yanking out her hairpins. There were dozens of them, it seemed, and with each one he pulled, the mass of hair seemed to grow wilder. Angrier. The curling locks tangled and knotted between his fingers, obstructing his explorations. By the time he’d satisfied himself that her skull was intact, he could have believed the hair was alive. And hungry.

Was I expecting to bark with laughter 3% into a romance novel? I was not. And with that delightful surprise, I began a journey that would lead me to Tessa Dare’s entire catalog, with more authors to follow.

In Do You Want to Start a Scandal, Charlotte Highwood and Piers Brandon (Lord Granville), are caught in a compromising position, and so Piers does the honorable thing and proposes marriage so she’s not ruined (the Regency era was nuts, guys). But Charlotte doesn’t want to get married to him; she wants to travel the Continent with her other close-to-spinsterhood friend. She’s also a romantic – although she’s been tarred with the “Desperate Debutante” moniker, she still wants to marry for love rather than ruination-avoidance, and wants the same for Piers.

Charlotte asks for two weeks to try and get them out of the situation, and Piers grants it to her even though he’s decided, almost immediately, that he really does want to marry her. He actually likes her, plus he’s got some (non-dastardly) secrets he’s hiding and wants to avoid attention to protect them. Charlotte is attracted to him and enjoys indulging that to relieve some of the sexual tension, but sticks to her opening position of not wanting to marry. The plot is driven forward by them trying to solve the mini-mystery that compromised them, by Piers trying to hide his business from Charlotte, and a few unexplained calamities that bring them closer together. Both Piers and Charlotte have appeared in other Dare books. Piers in another installment of the Castles Ever After series and Charlotte as part of the Spindle Cove series. You don’t have to have read any of those books to enjoy this one, but both provide some valuable back story that is only glanced upon here.

I can’t say that I’ve read any of Tessa Dare’s work that I haven’t loved, and Do You Want to Start a Scandal is no exception. While the book has many of the reliable historical romance plot points (a matchmaking mama, a rake, a compromising position that’s not what it looks like), it still brings both originality and humor to the familiar beats. I’ve read a lot of romance novels since that podcast two years ago, and I find Charlotte’s reasons for not wanting to marry Piers refreshing. She wants to explore the world and become herself, and she keeps a steady sense of humor about herself and her marriage predicament, both before and after getting entangled with Piers. Dare also has a somewhat different take on one of my least favorite hero complexes: “I’m not capable of love” as an obstacle to the couple getting together. Piers still wants Charlotte, even though he doesn’t think he loves her and she keeps saying she doesn’t love him. But he likes her an awful lot, and more importantly he respects her. She is keenly observant and intuitive, and while somewhat artless in the way she plunges into things, she is by no means painfully oblivious to herself and the world around her, which sometimes happens with characters like these. “Innocent, not ignorant” is how she describes herself, and that’s proven throughout the novel.

There is also the “mystery” moving the plot forward, which instead of being used to artificially raise the dramatic stakes, is mostly used to help the characters surprise each other with their hidden talents, and it’s fun for us to watch two competent people try and solve problems together. As a reader I liked them more and more as I got to know them better, and that made their love story that much more believable.

Add on some truly gut-bustingly funny scenes and you’ve got another winning addition to the Tessa Dare section on your shelf (don’t have one? – you should start one!). There is a screamingly funny birds and bees discussion using an aubergine and a peach for visual aids that rightly gets a lot of attention. But there are also lots of throwaway lines that just punctuate the whole book with delights. Such as a description of how Charlotte and her friend Delia pass their time as wallflowers at various assemblies:

They conspired in corners and invented games like ‘Spot the Wooden Tooth’ and ‘Rake, Rake, Duke’ and folded their unused dance cards into paper boats for a Punchbowl Regatta.

I love the idea of the ballroom outcasts having some fun, rather than drowning in the misery and mortification that is probably historically more accurate but a lot less enjoyable for the reader.

Grade: A-.
Grade for Tessa Dare: A+ as an ambassador for historical romance. She opened a whole world for me and I’m deeply grateful.

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Do You Want to Start a Scandal by Tessa Dare

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  1. I loved this one. Glad it was nominated.

  2. Dora says:

    I love Tessa Dare, but I feel like she’s done some of her best with the less stereotypical and aggressively alpha heroes, like Colin in A Week to be Wicked. That’s just my personal preference, though.

  3. Cat C says:

    Great review! So happy that PCHH introduced you to Tessa Dare, who is also one of my favorite authors, and the romance genre overall. I’d sadly been cooling on her as the Castles Ever After series just hadn’t been appealing to me, but this re-engaged me with its farcical humor. (Though I have mixed feelings about the aubergine/peach scene as it is hilarious but knowing it was a reference to sexting with emoji, and seeing the frequent references on Twitter, took away from it for me, as I felt the idea would have worked just as well with slightly different objects that would make more sense for the characters’ universe whereas this felt like it was only used for modern readers and the characters themselves were confused as to why they were using these two fruits.) (I know that’s a really long aside but it’s symptomatic of why I wasn’t crazy about the Castles Ever After books, where the modern references seemed to start to take precedence over the story cohesion.) (Obviously YMMV, I know some people avoid any historicals with cutesy titles period, and for those of you who don’t recognize it this is a reference to “Do You Want to Build a Snowman” from Frozen–you’re welcome for the earworm–and I would say I am on the tolerant side of cutesiness and modern references. I guess there are just some situations where it jars me too much, kind of like other people find certain kinds of anachronisms too jarring to invest in the story.) Anyway, if this sounds like the kind of thing you like to read, DO IT because you will laugh soooooo hard. Just try not to get hung up on Twitter references like I did.

  4. Lori says:

    I was just listening to this podcast episode last week! Actually re-listening because it is one of my favorites. Ever. The panel just sounds like they’re having so much fun! I wasn’t really a romance reader at that point and it was how I discovered this website and my love for Lisa Kleypas and historical romances.

    Give me all the dukes, earls and other made up titles! I love this book too. Humor and romance with a house party? All in.

  5. Megan M. says:

    For some reason I read the title to the tune of “Do You Want To Build A Snowman.” Tessa Dare sounds great! I’ve never read her before, either. My gateway to romance occurred when I was young and would read anything I could get my hands on and so snatched up my grandmother’s romances. I read a few Barbara Delinskys that will always stay with me.

  6. kkw says:

    Love the book, love the review.

    For some reason I couldn’t be satisfied with hearting Cat C’s comment, and felt compelled to agree emphatically in the comments.

  7. Elizabeth says:

    Loved this book! Tessa Dare is one of my all-time favorites.

  8. LauraL says:

    Winnay, so glad you found romance and Tessa Dare. Thanks for sharing your story along with your review.

    I absolutely love the friendship between Charlotte and Delia in this book! The romance was pretty good, too.

  9. Lizzy says:

    I really liked this book, which I was super happy about because I love Spindle Cove but wasn’t thrilled by Castles Ever After.

  10. The Other Kate says:

    I enjoyed this book, but there were two things that would have knocked it down a letter grade for me. First, there are a lot of exciting things hinted at that never come to pass. (Once an author dangles hints of espionage in front of me, anything less will be anticlimax!)

    Secondly, Piers – who I generally liked, along with the wonderful Charlotte – does something super dumb and WTFy. Without going into details, he endangers Charlotte’s safety and that of everyone else in the house, and needlessly destroys other people’s property, in order to drive Charlotte into his arms. I was taken aback by this Old Skool alpha-hole behavior from someone who is normally a quite decent hero. His sheepish reaction to being called out was adorkable, but it did not atone for the fact that YOU COULD HAVE KILLED EVERYONE AND YOU DESTROYED ALL HER STUFF AND YOU LIED.

    The book works as a fun, light read. I guess Piers’ action fits if you treat the whole story as a screwball comedy, but . . . seriously, dude, WTF.

  11. Jill says:

    @Megan M, I came here to say the same thing! . Mrs. Highwood tells Charlotte to ‘Talk less, smile more,’ and a lot of their banter reminded me very heavily of a Regency appropriate Lorelai and Emily Gilmore. The emoji sex talk solidified it for me that these were meant to be deliberate pop culture references and I felt like it worked really well. I tore my waythrough this book and laughed for most of the ride.

  12. Emily C says:

    Ahhhh! Winnay, you and I are romance novel twins!
    PCHH is a must listen every week for me and that episode with SB Sarah is what completely changed my mind about romance novels. And my first buy was also Romancing the Duke! I loved it to pieces, but still only read romance sparingly until about 6 months ago when the country seemed to turn upside down, my job seemed to turn upside down and I realized how much I needed HEAs in my life! I have listened to that episode at least four times now and every time I write down a new title I missed before. And every time I come back this site or listen to the podcast I think “I’ve found my people” and it makes me so happy
    I’ve read more Tessa Dare than any other author so far, and i love that I can count on her for a little modern quirk that I’m not going to find anywhere else. Her heroines always have a strong motivation for independence away from marriage, usually having to actually be convinced in spite of all signs pointing to yes. I also love that just because they have fabulous sex, it doesn’t mean he’s The One. My favorite line from Charlotte- “Innocent, not ignorant.”

  13. JetGirl says:

    I love Tessa Dare’s books, but I hate this cover. It does nothing to illustrate the wit in the book. Then again, so many of the well-written romance covers don’t.

  14. Lindsay says:

    @Lori
    @kkw
    @CatC
    @Emily C
    @Winnay
    I could have written this first paragraph!

    LETS BE BEST FRIENDS. I *also* started reading romance after that episode of PCHH (Barrie Hardymon laughing, yall!) and I also regularly re-listen to it because it makes me giggle every. single. time!

    I’m actually trying to make my way through that 100 best list they made that summer after tunneling through the archives here!

  15. Stephanie says:

    That podcast is great! i love it when there’s crossover too; I’m not sure I heard the romance one. I loved this book too. Her historicals are so funny and I always root for the scoundrels 🙂

  16. Steffi says:

    @Megan M: Thank God it’s not just me. I keep wondering if the title is a deliberate reference.

  17. ClaireC says:

    Well the Twitter and Frozen references went right by me, but the aubergine and peaches had me snort-laughing so hard!!!! Tessa Dare is one of my favorites too, and I’m trying to pace myself while working through her older books – it’s hard!

  18. Emily C says:

    @Lindsay- Yes Girl!! I have the NPR romance list bookmarked and constantly refer back to it as I get further down this rabbit hole. Seriously, I’ve never found an online community that fit me so well as this one.
    And @Stephanie, if you want to talk about crossover- there was an episode of PCHH from a few years back when Barrie H squees over Outlander (specifically a cover of Entertainment Weekly with shirtless Sam Heughan, if memory serves) and laments that she has no one to discuss it with. The smart bitches answered the call, and I just had a marvelous drive to work listening to the episode of Smart Bitches Trashy Podcast with Barrie, Sarah and RHG basically fangirling hard over all things Outlander. I love love love it when my favorite things come together and connect that way.

  19. Mary says:

    @The Other Kate, I am right there with you. I read this and enjoyed it for the most part, but when Piers did that, I was ready to abandon the book. Like, wtf? You are seriously unhinged here, buddy. And I’m still salty about how Charlotte treated her supposed BFF.

  20. Karin says:

    Castles Ever After is not my favorite of Dare’s series, and the pop culture references all go over my head-but I have had an undying love for Tessa Dare ever since she did that promo video for “The Stud Club Trilogy” using her kids’ toys. Worth re-watching on Youtube, it’s hysterical! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4DzoNkomQ0

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