Private Scandal by Jenna Bayley-Burke
Samhain Publishing
Contemporary
ISBN: 978-1-60928-428-2
Reviewed by Vanessa

Spitfire, Megan Carlton is a hotel heiress who doesn’t have very many skills and in fact didn’t even graduate high school. She is very compassionate and will fight for what she believes in, but she won’t fight if she believes it is a losing battle. Megan believes her lover of the past seven years is a philanderer like her father. Megan had showed up to see Brandon on her birthday to have him explain why he now owns her family’s business only do discover him lip-locked in the arms of another woman, Gemma Ryan. Not asking any questions, she seeks to salvage what is left of her pride by learning to take care of herself and find her own way in the world.

Corporate Raider, Brandon Knight, thinks he finally has it all after obtaining the Carlton’s hotel as well as their young daughter, the woman he loves. Brandon longs to make their relationship public as well as permanent. However, Megan has disappeared and everyone believes she is sunbathing on an island with her mother and her thief of a father. Imagine Brandon’s surprise when he stumbles upon his love working as a barista at a coffee shop. She isn’t too enthused to see him either. In fact, she shows him just how happy she is by throwing his order on him then quitting her job. Brandon wants to explain that he didn’t steal the family business but that he was rescuing it for her. Yet there is more to her anger than the hotel – it all goes back to the not so lovely birthday surprise she witnessed in the hallway. But Brandon doesn’t know that she witnessed him with Gemma Ryan and Megan isn’t too quick to point it out. Will he be able to get to the bottom of her anger and thaw her heart or will he decide it is too much effort and take Gemma up on her offer?

Private Scandal is an engrossing tale which involves you from the beginning until the end. You long to see what Megan will do to Brandon as she is constantly confronted by him and whether or not she will seek some sort of vengeance for the hurt that she has been inadvertently handed. After all, taking the family business isn’t the way to say happy birthday and neither is being caught with another woman! I liked that Brandon acknowledged her right to her pain, but didn’t completely agree with him when he chose to keep things secret from his friend in regards to Gemma Ryan. Megan had no problem divulging what she saw between Gemma and Brandon on her birthday as she shares the pain of their betrayal hurting and striking out at others. Private Scandal was a change from the normal story that I read. In this one the hero, Brandon, had to be more understanding and gentler with the heroine and he had to acknowledge that what he thought was a good thing would have been better if it didn’t come as a surprise to Megan. Private Scandal was an engaging read that had this reader wondering if there would be sequels to tie up those things left open in the end.