When I reviewed Sophie Jordan’s debut novel, I noted that she had promise, so when I saw In Scandal They Wed on our review list, I decided to try reading her again. On the positive side, she has strengthened her prose and she does a good job of evoking the emotions of her characters. However, this novel also relies too much on leads who cannot be bothered to communicate effectively with one another, as well as a hero who jumps from one overreaction to another with a swiftness that gave me whiplash.

The novel opens with Evie’s half sister Linnie giving birth to an illegitimate child. In a genteel family of modest means, this is disastrous. Evie’s stepmother is determined that her beautiful Linnie would make an advantageous marriage, so she decides to have the child put away. Evie cannot bear the thought of her infant nephew being thrown out and decides to claim the infant as her own. Recently returned from a traumatic voyage with a former employer, Evie simply claims that she married while abroad and that her husband died, leaving her alone with their son.

Evie’s ruse works for a time. However, after several years, the cousin of Linnie’s old lover shows up. Spencer Lockhart has returned from the Crimean War, having promised his late cousin that he would look out for Linnie and their child. Given that Evie lives in poverty, she fears that Spencer will take her beloved son so she passes herself off as Linnie. The two spar back and forth a bit, and Spencer eventually offers to marry Evie – a marriage of convenience that she accepts. However, she tells Spencer that she has no wish to be intimate with him until she gets to know him better.

At this point, I thought I was still reading what would be a pretty good book. It starts off strong, and the scene in which Evie claims her half-sister’s child as her own is beautifully written. Even though the idea of Evie having servants while living in a thatched cottage and being too poor to pay them seemed unrealistic, the story still flowed well enough that I could swallow it. And Evie’s initial interactions with Spencer worked. Their mutual attraction was apparent and Evie’s deception added extra tension to a situation that already crackled.

Considering that Evie lies to Spencer about her identity, we should have a situation already fraught with tension. However, rather than work with what she has, the author muddies things by not building on that tension. Much energy gets expended on other issues and this diffuses the impact of the identity question. For example, we get constant references to Spencer’s postwar nightmares and, while he clearly feels tortured by these, they serve more as a distraction than as an issue that drives the plot or the relationship forward. Had he and Evie spent time dealing with this issue, it would have made sense, but they don’t. The author instead focuses on a more trivial, “You say you don’t want me but I know you really do so I’m going to make you see that you want me,” sort of conflict. Given the truly meaty and interesting issues pushed to the side in this story, the amount of time spent on the mundane and silly “You know you want me” game between these two was truly maddening.

The game-playing between these characters and their lack of honest communication with one another took what started as an emotional story and made it into something trite and silly. The setup of the novel was unique but it devolved into Evie feeling hot and bothered while telling Spencer that she didn’t want him. Been there, done that many novels over. Spencer, on the other hand, keeps telling Evie that he will have her in the end and at one point, he thinks, “He knew a thing or two about talking reluctant ladies out of their gowns. It was his birthright.” Not quite rape-y hero antics, but still disrespectful enough of Evie that I raised an eyebrow.

Of course, even with the game-playing, we all know that the big identity conflict in the heart of this book must come to a head sometime. I’ll not spoil the book by giving details, but I will point out that the jump from Spencer feeling protective of Evie to over-the-top anger to undying love really was too much. The man spent the latter half of the book going to extremes again and again and again, and this sort of behavior makes him appear silly and it robs his deepest emotions of their impact on the reader. In addition, one bit of warning is in order. When angry with the heroine, Spencer lashes out at Evie in ways that many readers (myself included) will find truly repugnant. I found it impossible to forgive him for his actions as they were so extreme, but those who can tolerate a lot from their characters may not have as many problems with him as I did.

Even though the latter parts of the book unraveled quite a bit for me, In Scandal They Wed did get off to a promising start. Jordan takes what would seem an utterly unbelievable premise and made me want to believe. In addition, she writes emotion in a very evocative fashion. With a little more communication between characters and more control of the emotions between them, this could have been an effective book. However, in its current condition, it just didn’t work consistently.