Not Quite a Scandal by Bliss Bennet
Not Quite a Scandal by Bliss Bennet Series: Audacious Ladies of Audley series book #3
on April 2, 2024
Genres: Fiction / Historical / General, Fiction / Romance / Historical / Regency
Pages: 389
Goodreads
The latest in the award-winning Audacious Ladies of Audley series
An inheritance lost. A betrothal threatened. A scandal brewing…
Outspoken Bathsheba Honeychurch knows how difficult it is for an unmarried woman, even a Quaker, to successfully champion political change. Her solution? Wed best friend Ash Griffin and begin remaking the world. But the arrival of Ash’s worldly cousin with unthinkable news puts Sheba’s dreams for the future suddenly at risk…
The death of Noel Griffin’s grandfather exposes an appalling betrayal: Noel is not the heir to the Silliman earldom, despite what the late earl raised him to believe. Still, the only honorable course is to accept his widowed grandmother’s bitter charge: find the true heir, disentangle him from his religious community, and tutor him in the responsibilities and privileges of a title Noel assumed would be his. He certainly won’t allow a presumptuous, irritating Quakeress to keep him from his duty—no matter how fascinating he finds her…
When scandal threatens both their reputations, can Sheba and Noel look beyond past dreams and imagine a new world—together?
Not Quite a Scandal is book three in the Audacious Ladies of Audley series. In this story, Bathsheba “Sheba” Honeychurch is a dedicated Quaker abolitionist who plans to marry her friend Ash to pursue a life of activism. Her plans are upended when Noel Griffin, a sophisticated Londoner, arrives to reveal that Ash is actually the long-lost heir to an Earldom. Noel, who had expected to inherit the title himself, is tasked with training the “unrefined” Ash for his new station. As Sheba fights to keep Ash grounded in their shared Quaker values, she finds herself increasingly drawn to Noel’s hidden depth and intellectual respect for her work I always enjoy the tension in an enemies to lovers trope and Ms. Bennet does not disappoint. I loved the depth of the characters in this book and how the author developed them. The heroine Bathsheba is an opinionated Quakeress whose every breath is to fight against slavery. She’s annoying and at times rude, but Bathsheba has a humility that makes her endearing. This story is intelligent and at times emotionally challenging. The theme of slavery runs all throughout the book, and the author incorporates actual people who fought against it in Britain at the time. This is a sweet romance and well worth reading.
