Barbara Metzger is a hit-or-miss author. At best, her Regencies are sparkling little gems full of sly humor and fun wordplay. At worst, they’re silly and contrived, with tiresome puns and labored jokes. This book falls somewhere in between.

Galen Woodrow, Lord Woodbridge, has been dumped unceremoniously at the altar by the beautiful but flighty Floria Cleary. Twice. To counter the scandal, he comes up with the brilliantly drunken idea of marrying Margot Montclaire, London’s most beautiful and sought-after songstress. After some strenuous persuasion (including an agreement to a six-month period of celibacy), Lord Woodbridge finds himself with a bride and new, more delightful scandal on his hands.

There is more to Margot than meets the eye, though. It turns out that she is actually the daughter of a baron who eloped with a French opera singer, and she ran away to London to escape her wicked uncle’s machinations. Unfortunately, said wicked uncle still has custody of Ansel, Margot’s eleven-year-old brother and the fledgling Baron Penrose. Margot fears for Ansel’s life, and Galen agrees to save the boy.

The plot thickens immediately when Galen goes to the rescue, mere days after the hasty wedding. Harriet, Galen’s impossibly spoilt younger sister, shows up at Galen’s townhouse and immediately begins causing more gossip by dressing in gowns inappropriate for a debutante, and showing an unseemly fondness for men. Once the ton discovers that Woodbridge has disappeared on a mysterious errand, Margot, who decided to complete her contract with her theatre and is still singing every night, becomes the object of scorn and lewd speculation. Then Lady Floria arrives back in town, unmarried and determined to recover her dowry, and promptly settles into her former fiance’s household. Pity Margot: she has to deal with all this upheaval while overseeing preparations for a musicale meant to introduce her formally to Polite Society.

Galen is facing his own difficulties. He finds Ansel in pitiful shape, suffering from laudanum poisoning, apparently administered by order of the boy’s own uncle. Rescuing the fragile lad takes much longer than Galen thought, given Ansel’s precarious condition. The chaos only mounts when he arrives home to find Margot nearing a nervous collapse, Rufus (Margot’s dog) terrifying the hired help, Harriet behaving like a tart, and Floria egging her former almost-sister-in-law to greater mischief. Will Harriet come to a sticky end? Will Floria get her just desserts? Will the wicked uncle’s crimes be revealed and appropriately punished? Will the two lovers find enough time and opportunity to declare their feelings in the midst of all this?

To Metzger’s credit, she does wrap up all the loose ends neatly in a raucously entertaining climax. But this book, while enjoyable enough, is marred by enough flaws to render it only slightly above average. The biggest problem is the writing style. Regency slang is often used to impart the proper flavor of the period, but Saved By Scandal is cluttered by even more jargon than usual. Nodcocks and cork-brains abound, Galen constantly threatens to spill some villain’s claret, Rufus casts up his accounts when he eats too many sweets, etc. etc. This slang is contrasted strangely with an occasionally modern pace in the dialogue. And the French phrases sprinkled throughout the book contain just enough errors to distract the reader when they pop up.

More importantly, the love story isn’t quite as convincing as it could have been. Margot and Galen are certainly likable enough, but they’re separated for a large part of the story. They don’t have much chance to interact with each other, and it seems as if they spend most of their time dealing with each other’s relatives. Their declaration of love, while delightful, doesn’t seem very credible in the end. The secondary characters are also more caricatures than real people: the villain is suitably ugly and unredeemable, the second bananas suitably zany and second-banana-ish, the butler suitably intimidating.

Saved By Scandal is probably only worth reading if you’re a Metzger fan. It’s not her best work, but it’s a fast, relatively fun novel nonetheless.