Happy Monday bookish people! I hope you’re all having a good day today. I am bringing you a review of one of the books that I read in January: A Season for Scandal by Laura Wood.
An all-female detective agency righting wrongs at the end of the nineteenth century; infiltrating a scandalous upper class world straight out of Bridgerton and using their wit and bravery to unmask a villain.
When Marigold Bloom finds her family business in trouble a chance encounter with the devastatingly handsome and extremely bad-tempered Oliver Lockhart leads her to the Aviary – a secret agency of women who specialise in blackmailing troublesome men. Soon, Mari is the agency’s newest recruit, sent to investigate the mysterious return of Oliver’s long lost sister. Forced to masquerade as a newly engaged couple, it is up to Mari and Oliver to determine if there is an imposter in their midst. But what happens when the line between truth and fiction starts to blur? And what do you do when a pretend romance starts to feel all too real?
My Review:
My first, and only so far, five star read of 2026. This book is the second in the Agency for Scandal series by Laura Wood, each book in the series follows a separate character within the world – all female characters that somehow interconnect with each other and with the agency. This second book follows Marigold, she and her family live in and own a florist shop. She very quickly becomes involved with the agency who help her sort her own personal matters before recruiting her to their cause, you follow her as she embarks on this journey and the struggles she faces. Alongside this you revisit a character that you meet in the first in the series, Agency for Scandal, Oliver Lockhart and their paths become intertwined. I loved seeing a different side to Oliver’s character in this second book, you only have a fleeting image of him from Agency of Scandal but even then I knew I would love his book and getting to flesh out his character.
I enjoyed seeing Marigold’s strength of character and her eternal optimism, definitely a grumpy x sunshine partnership. At the beginning you see a cluster of bad things befall Marigold and the rest of the novel is spent rebuilding her in layers and I think this was done expertly by Laura Wood. It might be a book over 500 pages but I raced through it in what felt like moments.
Have you read this book? What did you think of it?
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