Some heroines sweep into a ballroom and conquer it. Lady Ruby Ballimore sweeps into one dressed like a sugared pineapple, accidentally ruins a marquess, and sets fire to four Seasons of effort in a single evening. That opening tells you almost everything about the comic engine humming under Scandal of the Summer by Alexandra Vasti, the first book in the new Flirty Rotten Scoundrels series and a Regency caper that grins at you from the very first page.
What follows is a spoiler-free look at what sings, what wobbles, and who should pack a bag for Cornwall.
A Pineapple Gown and a Plan Gone Gloriously Sideways
After her very public disgrace, Ruby decides she is finished waiting for a life that keeps refusing to arrive. So she forges an invitation in her father’s name, gathers her two dearest friends, and flees to Pomeroy House, the seaside estate of a princess who never actually visits. The plan is simple. Pose as ladies-in-waiting, paint and read and breathe sea air, and let London forget the lot of them.
What she finds instead is a crumbling mansion, a litter of orphaned puppies, and a steward who is lying about more or less everything. Captain Malcolm Archer, former privateer and full-time con man, has been using the abandoned house as cover for a smuggling operation and as free lodging for his ragtag crew. The trouble is that Ruby happens to be the same sharp-eyed woman who once exposed his last scheme in a London drawing room. She sees straight through him. He cannot quite stop looking at her. You can guess roughly where the tide carries the two of them, and yet Vasti makes the trip a genuine pleasure.
A few things “Scandal of the Summer” does right from the start:
- It commits to the bit. When the crew tries to frighten off their uninvited guests with insect invasions and a homemade sea monster, Ruby treats the chaos as a mild scheduling inconvenience.
- It earns its laughs. The humor grows out of character rather than out of winking at the reader.
- It moves. Brisk chapters and two alternating points of view keep the pages flipping well past your bedtime.
Meet the Scoundrels of Pomeroy House
Ruby Ballimore, the Heroine Who Sees Too Much
Ruby is the beating heart of the book. She is a self-taught antiquities scholar who has published her papers under a false name to shield her father’s reputation, a woman whose passion reads as “too much” to everyone who matters in polite society. The ache at her center, the long and quiet wish that her cold father might one day be proud of her, gives all the comedy real ballast. So when a man finally tells her there is nothing about her he would change, the moment lands hard, because we have watched her be told the opposite her entire life.
Captain Archer and His Band of Misfits
Archer is the rogue with a heart far too soft for his line of work, a charmer who lies to everyone except, in the end, the one person who can read him on sight. The supporting cast very nearly walks off with the whole story. There is Lamentation and Gerry, a quietly devoted couple; Wall, the ship’s surgeon turned village veterinarian; Eugénie, the crew’s gifted forger; and a forever-multiplying population of dogs. Vasti shapes them into a found family worth rooting for, and the warmth among them is, honestly, the book’s quiet triumph.
Add Ruby’s friends to the mix, gentle entomologist Alice and blunt, card-sharp Tamsin, and you have an ensemble bursting at the seams with personality.
The Heart Beneath the Hijinks
For all its slapstick, Scandal of the Summer by Alexandra Vasti is really a story about belonging. Ruby has spent her life trying to shrink herself into someone acceptable. Archer has spent his convinced he is only worth as much as his next con. Watching two people slowly decide that they are worth choosing exactly as they are, mess and all, is the sort of thing that makes a romance stick to your ribs. The steam is generous and the banter sparkles, but the emotional core is what you carry home.
Where the Tide Pulls a Little Too Fast
No book is flawless, and this one carries a few honest snags worth naming.
- The romance accelerates. The push and pull between Ruby and Archer resolves, reignites, and deepens in quick succession. Readers who treasure a long, agonizing slow burn may wish the antagonism had been left to simmer another fifty pages.
- The plot gets crowded. Between Archer’s backstory, the crew’s many schemes, the princess’s political intrigue, and a late turn toward real danger, the back half is asked to juggle a great deal at once. The shift from seaside farce to genuine peril is bracing, and not every thread gets equal room to breathe.
- The best gag fades early. The fake “haunting” the crew stages to scare the women off is such fun that I wanted far more of it before the story sailed on to other things.
None of these sink the voyage. They are simply the gap between a delightful read and a perfect one, which is right about where most readers seem to be landing.
Vasti’s Voice and the Books That Came Before
Alexandra Vasti is a literature professor by day, and her prose wears that fluency lightly. Her sentences are funny and precise, thick with sensory detail (you can practically smell the turpentine in Ruby’s tower studio) and sly asides that reward a close reader. If you already know her work, you know the trademark blend of silliness and steam. If you are new to her, Scandal of the Summer by Alexandra Vasti makes a fine front door.
Her earlier titles are well worth your shelf:
- Ne’er Duke Well and Earl Crush, her Belvoir’s Library Regencies
- Ladies in Hating, a queer Gothic romp that collected starred reviews
- The Halifax Hellions novellas, for when you want something shorter and saucier
If You Loved This, Read These Next
Readers who fall for this Cornwall caper will likely enjoy:
- Evie Dunmore, A League of Extraordinary Women series, for clever heroines and a streak of politics
- Tessa Dare, Castles Ever After, for warmth, big laughs, and ramshackle estates
- India Holton, Dangerous Damsels, for whimsy and gleeful, chaotic plotting
- Lisa Kleypas, The Wallflowers, for found-family friendship and proper swoon
- Amalie Howard or Manda Collins, for Regency romps with adventure and heat
Should You Book Passage to Cornwall?
Yes, and gladly. Scandal of the Summer by Alexandra Vasti is a sun-warmed, dog-strewn, thoroughly charming start to a series that already has its sequels half-promised in Alice and Tamsin. It asks very little of you beyond a willingness to be delighted, and it hands back a heroine you will want to befriend and a crew you will be sorry to leave behind. Come for the forged invitation and the fake princess. Stay for the cove.
