Something Scandalous, Treacherous and Black


Fiction - Humor/Comedy
406 Pages
Reviewed on 05/31/2023
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    Book Review

Reviewed by K.C. Finn for Readers' Favorite

Something Scandalous, Treacherous and Black is a work in the humourous writing, interpersonal drama, and romantic drama subgenres. It is best suited to the general adult reading audience and is penned by Zachary Ryan. In this fantastic and highly amusing combination of different relationships, each with its interlocking secrets and scandals, we find that everything comes to a head over the impending loveless marriage of Paige and Joshua. However, while Joshua must marry a woman to keep his family inheritance, he's always had eyes for his best man, Joey. Meanwhile, Paige’s chances of walking down the aisle for her share of the cash are about to be thwarted by a scheming wedding planner out for revenge.

Zachary Ryan has crafted a fantastic romantic romp with so many secrets and subplots that it will leave you rapt with suspense on every page, racing to the end to see if everything will turn out all right for our central couple in their quest for happiness and independent lives. I felt that the LGBTQ+ relationship of the work was well-handled and never the actual butt of the joke, which is refreshing. I enjoyed Joey’s chaotic energy and desire to tank the whole wedding through his love for Joshua. Leo was also a fascinating character to throw into the mix, bringing spicy memories from the past into the present and playing on the heartstrings of what might have been. Overall, I recommend Something Scandalous, Treacherous and Black as a must-read for fans of wildly funny interpersonal dramas with a great cast of characters to fall in love with.

Alma Boucher

Joshua's parents pressure him to get married, and he becomes engaged to Paige. Paige has an agenda for marrying Joshua. Paige is still in love with Leo, who broke her heart, and marrying Joshua will keep her heart safe. Joshua's part of the deal in the loveless marriage is to pay off Paige's parents' debt. Chelsea seeks revenge for what Paige did to her years ago. As Paige's wedding planner, Chelsea has a golden opportunity to carry out her plans. Joey is no longer satisfied with keeping his and Joshua's relationship a secret. Joey plans to disrupt the wedding and force Joshua to tell the truth about them. A marriage of convenience turns into a scandal when secrets are revealed. Find out more in Something Scandalous, Treacherous and Black by Zachary Ryan.

Something Scandalous, Treacherous and Black is complicated and intriguing. Zachary Ryan intertwines betrayal, scandals, and secrets to hook me. The chapters flowed into each other and made reading more accessible. There was enough action and events to keep me engaged until the end. The characters are authentic and relatable. There was absolutely nothing about Chelsea's character that I liked. With a person like Chelsea around, you don't need any enemies. On the other hand, Paige puts the needs of everyone she cares about before hers. It is an excellent story that kept me on the edge of my seat with all the suspense. It exceeded all my expectations and was unlike anything I expected.

Jamie Michele

Zachary Ryan's Something Scandalous, Treacherous, and Black revolves around a marriage of convenience between Paige and Joshua. The pair come together out of necessity as Joshua is expected by his family to be a 'respectable Samuels', a role that ignores the fact that he is gay, while Paige still yearns for her former flame, Leo. Making matters worse, the best man, the wedding planner, and some other resurrected spanners thrown into the works are operating on their own agendas. As the wedding of convenience starts to look a lot less like a well-orchestrated champagne toast that, with the clink of flutes will dissolve both Paige and Joshua's immediate problems, and more like a Molotov cocktail, the not-a-couple couple must navigate the dangerous labyrinth of impending nuptials that appears to be threatened from every angle.

One word to describe Something Scandalous, Treacherous, and Black by Zachary Ryan? Fun. Oh my gosh, SO much fun. I adore a good train wreck and Ryan proves himself to be masterful in creating a mountain of drama out of a lump of caviar, and it is a frustrating, funny, and bold endeavor. It is also sad in that Paige finds herself saddled with someone else's debt and Joshua needs Paige as a beard because he cannot be who he truly is. Talk about families that suck. The old adage of parents being willing to do anything for their children doesn't apply here. From a literary standpoint, the writing is good (with the exception of a plethora of dialogue tags that gets distracting), but the story is fast-paced, the character development is ace since Ryan gives us multiple point of view characters, and the journey getting to, or not to, the altar is about as fun a crucible as I've read so far this year. This is an easy novel to recommend.