Listen carefully. That whirling sound you hear is Georgette Heyer spinning in her grave.

Do you hate that dull historical stuff? Don’t know the difference between an annulment and a divorce and don’t want to? Do you wish that your historical heroines would act more like the characters on All My Children and less like people who lived two hundred years ago? The wait is over. Have I got the book for you! Scandalous is a book that I would place off-limits to my children, not because of the sex, but because of the vast amount of historical misinformation that they might pick up from reading it. This book made my head ache.

Thompson’s story is simple, but inconsistencies and errors make it hard to follow. Readers of regency era romances are some of the most savvy readers around when it comes to historical accuracy. This book is going to be hard for them to take.

Scandalous is the story of penniless orphan Christine, who is forced to marry a nobleman for no apparent reason. Well that’s not exactly true; you do eventually learn the reason, but by that time you don’t care. This nobleman – Gavin Norfolk, Marquis of Greenhaven – is not actually present at the wedding. There is no proxy wedding; the two just sign the papers and leave without meeting. (Huh?) Christine has heard that Gavin is evil (a drunkard and a womanizer) and she apparently is the kind of woman who believes everything she hears.

Two years later Gavin meets Christine at a party where she is acting like a slut. Has Christine had some kind of mental breakdown? No. She is only pretending to be a slut! She is trying to force Gavin to take their marriage to Parliament and have it annulled. How will she accomplish this? By ruining her reputation and shaming him. No, I’m not kidding. This is the plot.

At the risk of insulting at least half of the readers of this review I will explain a few things. Attention class, Regency 101 is now in session. Parliament did not grant annulments. Because Gavin was a marquis, a trial for adultery could have been conducted in the House of Lords, but that would have required witnesses and would have resulted in divorce. The church courts, as any regency reader worth her salt knows, did grant annulments for a very few things, one of which was lack of consummation, which had to be confirmed with a medical examination. So if Christine wanted to get an annulment, the last thing she would want to do was ruin her reputation.

Gavin forces Christine to come live with him because it is so embarrassing to have her live by herself in a hotel. He tells her that if he goes to Parliament and annuls the marriage he will lose his entire fortune because his father’s will required that they remain married. In her first act of defiance, Christine goes out and spends a lot of money on clothes. (Presumably she believes that Gavin will conclude that it is worth losing all of his money to avoid paying a few clothing bills.) And guess what she buys? Piles of ready made gowns! Yes, you and I know that these were the days before quality ready-made clothing, but apparently the author and her editor do not. In double checking this fact I was told that there were some shops that sold used clothing, some of which came from lower class dead people. I don’t think that is what Christine was buying.

To make matters worse, the dialogue in Scandalous is written in an overwrought style that has not been popular since the turn of the twentieth century. Witness the scene where Gavin fetches his wife from her hotel room:

“I am your husband,” he answered in the same impatient tone. “My funds paid for this room. My funds paid for your maid. She is not your servant – but mine. A fact she may have well forgotten.”

I can’t think of one thing I liked about this book. Christine, the heroine does things that no virtuous 19th century woman could even think of doing. Gavin, the hero, is as silly as she is. As the book goes on, Christine manages to convince Gavin that she has a lover. Is Gavin jealous? No, he decides to make Christine fall in love with him so that he won’t be forced to “give her the annulment.” Throughout the book the two continue to talk this way. Even after the marriage has been consummated they are under the impression that it could easily be dissolved.

AAARRRGGGGHHHHH!

A few years ago, Ronda Thompson wrote a very clever contemporary romance called Isn’t It Romantic; I enjoyed it so much I gave it DIK status. Since that time, author Thompson has had published only historical romances. Those other historical romances were all western historicals, and none were well-received here at AAR. I so wish she’d go back to writing contemporaries, where she wouldn’t have to face those pesky historical accuracy issues.

Right now I have to go and read some Mary Balogh. My head is about to explode.