TBR Challenge 2011: One Touch of Scandal by Liz Carlyle

April 18, 2011

Ahhh, the TBR pile…one of life’s great mysteries!
http://www.lizcarlyle.com/

I recently signed up for the TBR challenge 2011, hosted by The Misadventures of a Super Librarian. Sounds like fun! Mwahahahaahhaha!

Thanks to Tracy at Tracy’s Place for bringing this challenge to my attention...Now I have another reading challenge to do! How hard can another challenge be I thought? Then I went home and looked at my TBR pile. While I stood there staring, my mind started wandering (as it often times does.) Just why do books that I must have end up being shoved aside, forgotten…for months…sometimes years? In most cases I’ve never read a word in them, although some I’ve started then put back. In the case of One Touch of Scandal by Liz Carlyle (it hasn’t been in my pile that long), the reason it was in my TBR pile at all was due to a bad review I read somewhere. Let that be a lesson to you…read those books, regardless of what reviewers say! (A DNF might be the exception to the rule!)

Anyway, in this case, I’m glad that I read One Touch of Scandal, because I liked the book quite a lot. And for those of you that are keeping track, this is an early Victorian romance with some paranormal elements thrown in to make the plot move. If fact, Ms. Carlyle has created another one of those ancient secret mystical organizations and at this point in the series I found all the hocus-pocus quite fascinating. Attention Ms. Carlyle: I wanted to have more of “Sibylla’s” story, but was given just a little…do I hear the sound of short story prequel in my ears?

If you are familiar with Ms. Carlyle, you know that most of her books are connected and when you visit her website take a look at all the ancestral charts she's created…I'm sure these are there so some of us don’t get lost in the plethora of characters. N-o-w, as often happens when I read authors that write with a "Cast of Thousands," my mind insists that I already know these characters, even when the author is creating a new series. True to form, I had a minor slow down while reading because I had to leaf through Ms. Carlyle's other books to try and find the connections. Of course there weren't any...I think. It would seem that One Touch of Scandal is a new series and a whole new world has been brought to life, filled with hunky mysterious men and smart beautiful women.

Here is the short plot: Adrian, the hero, has the gift of sight…saying he doesn’t like this gift is an understatement. Grace, the heroine, is in need of rescuing...you see...at anytime throughout the book she may be arrested for murdering her secret fiance. Adrian reluctantly comes to the rescue…and we are introduced to two interesting flawed characters. And there are some mighty big flaws to overcome! I found the whole journey toward that HEA to be very fascinating and engrossing. At last a hero and heroine who deserve each other and not only that, they make a perfect match!

This story has everything you could want…something to snuggle up to with that cup of hot chocolate or a day at the beach soaking up the sun. There is murder, mayhem, mystery, cute funny children, hot hot sex, great couple and almost no TSTL moments…and let’s not forget the tons and tons of secondary characters. So many of them that I wonder how we are going to tie up those loose ends in just a mere three books. There was a typo I caught on page 344, I’m assuming it should be planet Mercury not plant Mercury…hopefully next printing maybe it won’t be there. There was also some mushy soul mate stuff going on toward the end that could have been turned down a tad…but overall this was a pretty good read, a great start to a new series and I think you’ll like it.

Your history lesson for the day: Queen Victoria reigned from June 20 1837 to January 22, 1901. This story takes place in 1848, so I’m calling this early Victorian, the dresses were just starting to poof out and the hair was curled a lot. Fashion plates from http://www.marquise.de/en/1800/pics/1800b.shtml

One book gone from my TBR and it wasn’t as painful as I thought.

Time/Place: Early Victorian England
Rating:
Sensuality Rating: Hot!!!