Family scandal drove Declan Sinclair into exile years ago. Now he’s called home, devastated to discover his brother has been murdered, making Declan the new Duke of Darington. As he tries to unravel what happened to his brother, the clues point to the man he blames for his exile. Declan resolves to ruin the culprit. If only the daughter of the man’s business partner, lovely Lady Alethea Swinton, didn’t tempt his resolve. Lady Alethea Swinton has cultivated her pristine reputation in the hopes of winning her father’s praise. When her childhood friend returns, Alethea finds she’s willing to court scandal and defy her father to help the handsome Declan uncover the truth behind his brother’s death. But Declan’s redemption would mean her family’s ruin... Each book in the Once Upon A Scandal series is STANDALONE: * To Love a Scandalous Duke * To Resist a Scandalous Rogue * To Tame a Scandalous Lady * To Tempt a Scandalous Lord
Series
1 primary bookOnce Upon a Scandal is a 1-book series first released in 2017 with contributions by Liana De la Rosa.
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A friends-to-lovers historical romance/mystery. The mystery was really fun, and got things going much faster, because in the beginning I felt like both Alethea and Declan were kind of flat as characters, though they had really great sexual tension.
There's a lot going on in this book. The titular scandal, of the Declan's father being framed for swindling business deals. The potential scandal of Alethea falling in love with him since Alethea's father was Declan's father's business partner. Figuring out who murdered Declan's brother and why. Alethea trying to prevent herself from getting married off, and trying to prevent her twin brother from losing everything by falling in love with a man her father hates. Whoo boy. Once it got going, it was pretty action-packed.
Each chapter begins with a diary entry, but you don't know whose diary it is until most of the way through the book, and it started to wear on me before it began to make sense, and I don't know that I liked that device. I didn't need snippets of the entries, at least in the format they were in.
Read for #RomanceSparksJoy.
CW: mentions of previous stillbirth and miscarriages.
