Love and Other Scandals

Starred review from June 24, 2013
Joan Bennet is a respectable young lady worried that she’ll never find a husband. She’s also addicted to a not-so-respectable publication called 50 Ways To Sin. When her brother’s cheerfully disreputable friend Tristan Burke becomes his houseguest, Tristan and Joan strike up a flirtation that neither of them expects to go anywhere. Of course, that’s before her parents have to leave town and her scandalous Aunt Evangeline comes to “chaperone.” Linden somehow makes the Regency romance feel new again with this warm, likeable novel. With less chaperoning, Joan and Tristan become closer, letting attraction take its course. The obstacles to their love are simple but real: curvy Joan doesn’t know how to love her body or dress to flatter it, and Tristan’s unhappy family life gives him good reasons to fear marriage. Yet the simplicity of Linden’s plot is its strength, making the romance feel real and natural and allowing her great skill at characterization to take the weight of the story. Joan and Tristan genuinely enjoy each other, and their chemistry is sparkling. A quiet gem.

Starred review from July 1, 2013
If there is a more annoying lady in London than Joan Bennet, Tristan Burke has yet to meet her. While Tristan's good friend Douglas Bennet may allow his sister to run roughshod over his life, Tristan is not about to give up the delightful benefits of bachelorhood for a woman who will only stop talking when being kissed. As for Joan, she considers Tristan to be the most infuriating man in London. If he isn't questioning her fashion sense, he's interfering with what she reads. Between his constant intrusions into her life and his deliciously unforgettable kisses, it is enough to drive a lady simply mad. Linden, who racked up a well-deserved RITA Award last year for I Love the Earl (2011), soars to new heights of laughter-laced literary fun in the first in a new Regency-set series. Linden's writing is tartly witty, the chemistry she creates between Joan and Tristan is pure passion, and her subtle incorporation of the Fifty Shades phenomenon into the plot is priceless.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)