Review: SCANDALOUS by Tilly Bagshawe ***

Sasha Miller comes to Cambridge with a dream and leaves on a mission. After falling for the lies and charms of her Director of Studies ‘Theo Dexter’ she finds herself betrayed, humiliated and nursing a bundle of broken dreams. Heading to the US she is determined to rebuild her life.
Years later, Sasha emerges from Harvard Business School with one thing on her mind, the downfall of the now famous Professor Theo Dexter.
Meanwhile Theo’s long-suffering wife Theresa also finds herself betrayed and cast aside for a younger and prettier model. Unable to cope she returns to Cambridge a broken woman and tries to rebuild her life away from the scheming Theo Dexter.
One night Sasha turns up at Theresa’s door, she wants revenge at any cost, will Theresa help her?
From the deepest betrayal comes a shocking alliance. Two vengeful women, one very unlucky man…

Tilly Bagshawe has written several blockbusters and although I own most of them, I've only read one before this book - Do Not Disturb and I couldn't help loving it! Thus I expected great things from this one too, but sadly and surprisingly I found it less enjoyable than Do Not Disturb ...

I really liked the opening few chapters, the naive and innocent Sasha arriving to Cambridge, falling in love and then the ultimate betrayal ... I felt for her and I expected her to get some cruel revenge, but after the first part the book just went downhill for me ... Sasha is a successful business woman, Theo is still the cheating scumbag and somewhat of a celebrity, his ex-wife is lonely etc. But quite frankly, I just felt that nothing was really happening and the story just wasn't going anyway, we were just following the characters through the years. I was waiting and waiting for Sasha to finally get her massive revenge, but when it happened, it was just like, "Blah, that's it?" I expected something far more epic than something so basic, something that would make up for the slow story, but the ending just felt rushed and a big anti-climax.

Luckily, the story was quite well written and I did want to find out what happened next (although not much did), but I wasn't too keen on the characters either. To me they just liked dimension. I felt Sasha was at first too naive and then too hell-bent on revenge, it was like one extreme to another. Theo had no redeeming qualities whatsoever and just too easy to hate. I suppose I found Theresa to be the most complex, but for some reason I didn't grow too fond of her either, she was just too boring.

Some of my criticism may be attributed to the fact that it took me weeks to read this book - and honestly NOT because I didn't enjoy it (because I did and I was very excited to read it), but I was just soooo busy that I had hardly any time for reading so maybe that's why I couldn't get properly absorbed into the story.

Not my favourite from Ms Bagshawe, but I'm certainly not giving up on her as I really loved Do Not Disturb and I still have Adored and Flawless to read! This was an enjoyable read, it certainly didn't annoy me or anything, but I guess I just felt it wasn't scandalous enough to live up to its title.

overall rating:
plot: 2/5 | writing: 4/5 | characters: 2/5 | cover: 3/5