Review: Loyalty and Scandal by Raquel Arbeteta
Two enemies.
One inevitable arrangement.London, 1845. After being caught up in a scandal from her past, Lady Alisa Chadburn vowed never to trust men again—especially one who represents everything she despises about them: Lord Ezra MacLeod.
However, young Heather MacLeod isn’t to blame for having a scoundrel for a brother, and she clearly needs Alisa’s help to avoid making the same mistakes.
Ezra has no intention of changing his comfortable way of life one bit. The arrival of his shy, inexperienced younger sister in London is merely a distraction—nothing more. She won’t be any trouble because he has no plans to stifle her the way their family did up north. Heather needs room to spread her wings and stumble, no matter what a certain uptight aristocrat might think.
A new social season begins in the capital, and all the ingredients for a fresh scandal are in place. All it takes is two enemies, a misunderstanding… and the dark night of a ball.
“Years ago, she had vowed never to trust men, and if she were to make an updated list of the worst ones, Ezra MacLeod would undoubtedly top it.”
I GOT THE BOOK ON KU.
Please also note that the book is self published and translated from Spanish. I only saw that it was translated using Kindle translate, Amazon AI powered translation service. To be honest, AI powered translation would have turned me away from reading the book had I seen it prior to finishing the story, but I did not, I only noticed it after I was done.
Dear Raquel Arbeteta,
A Russian speaking book blogger reviewed a different book of yours and even though I am not a huge reader of m/f Victorian romances (not because I do not enjoy the time period, but for many other reasons), I was intrigued and excited to read a romance in this time period which was written by a writer whose first language was not English. I am trying to say that I was very eager to discover something new in this subgenre.
Alas. I am not exaggerating, when I say that this book did not feel new to me at all and again let me stress it is not as if I have read tons of Victorian romances.
First and foremost, there are quotes from Emma and Devil in Winter in the beginning of the story. I found that to be quite appropriate. I thought that the group of friends that wants to find husbands while all being some sort of outcasts in society reminded me of the Wallflowers series by Lisa Kleypas right away.
This is Alisa’s book and one of her friends Hope is already married here, so I am suspecting her book was already done, but all other books by this author that I saw on Amazon are in Spanish only, so I cannot confirm or deny. The third friend Evelyn is couple of years younger and still single.
Alisa was compromised in the eyes of the society when she was seventeen. I am not going to tell you how severely she was compromised because her story, her character growth very much hinges on that. I mean you can guess that she met a man, luckily the destruction of her reputation did not go that far so she could not return to society at all. She comes back in two or three years and participates in seasons. When the story begins she is 25 or 26, I believe. She still wants to get married and to have a home but she is not holding her hopes up.
Ezra is a Viscount and he has a lot of trauma in his past, as we learn, and Alisa does not like him, or she thinks she does not like him and besides the fact that she knows he had a lot of affairs, I have no idea why Alisa does not like him. I guess after her painful thing that happened to her she dislikes anyone who has affairs?
Alisa is portrayed as a very feminist woman, no she does not say the word feminist but she talks about women having the same opportunities as men a lot, which is good for her, but this was one of the things that jerked me out of the time the book was supposedly written in. Her reactions in some ways felt way ahead of her time, let us put it this way.
I felt for Alisa, but I also wanted to smack her on the head more than once, because honestly Ezra did not read to me as a bad person at all. He had issues, yes and because of his trauma he drank too much at times (by the way, if anyone is struggling with alcohol, make a deal with your partner to allow them to be with you if you do not drink – what?).
I like the chemistry between them quite a lot, that is the only reason the book gets a C, because “been there, read that many times before” was my main reaction as I was reading.
Oh, I do not know if this was just a clever joke, or the book originally was a Bridgerton fanfiction, but Lady Whistledown is mentioned as one of the society columnists. Make what you wish out of it.
Grade: C
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