I finished Scandalous Innocent, everyone! And I thought I’d give you a proper review of the book so you can all go out and get yourselves a copy.
So we started in 1676 with a woman called Phoebe. She hates a man called Leo cause he made a rude comment about her three years ago. They have a big argument at Ham House and decide to solve it by having a duel in the Great Hall. He wins, carries her upstairs, snogs her then saunters off.
Phoebe realizes she really likes him, spends days hanging around, hoping he’ll turn up. He does. She’s rude to him. She leaves in a hurry, is ‘kidnapped’ by him and kept in his house while he declares his love for her and they get it on.
Jump to 1803, there’s a woman called Phoebe. She’s hates a man for three years cause he seems all arrogant and mouthy and her mother wants her to marry him. She’s living in her brother’s house and the man she hates turns up and says he won the house in a bet so she’s got to bugger off. She can stay, though, if she marries him.
She’s like, ‘Urgh, never!’ Then she spends a few days in his company and quite fancies him. They go to visit friends and one of them is like, ‘Yeh, he’s terribly selfless, you know. He has a house where orphaned street children can live and he takes care of them. O, give me a break!
Anyway, she’s thinking about whether to agree to marry him and she goes to Ham House and there’s a portrait of the 1676 Phoebe with Leo. She’s looking at the painting and everyone else leaves the room and she thinks she heard something and the Phoebe on the painting is staring at her and someone is telling her to look.
That’s right, the painting is talking to her. Ten pages from the end, the book just got pretty wierd.
So she looks behind her and can see down into the Great Hall. And you’ll never guess what she sees? Um, I’m a bit embarrassed to tell you what happens…
Ok, so she sees some ghosts. Yup. Ghosts. Ten pages from the end, this badly written Mills&Boon bodice-ripper has turned into a ghost story. She sees two ghosts having a duel. She sees the man win and carry the woman up the stairs and gets a bit scared because the ghosts will arrive in the room that she’s in and when she looks, the man she’s thinking of marrying walks in.
And this, in her mind, is confirmation that she’s supposed to marry the man she “hates”. So she gets all soppy and is like, ‘I just love you soooo much.’
Ta dah! The end.
I’m not sure I did anything other than read the same story twice, to be honest. Apart from the ghost thing to link the two. It was two disconnected stories that had some of the same features.
I don’t feel I really gained anything by reading it, apart from maybe the moral that if you hate someone and they keep snogging you, maybe you should think about marrying them.
lazylauramaisey 