SCANDALOUS – L. J. SHEN

**Spoilers Ahead, Read On With Caution**

Making it so far into this series in such a short amount of time has really been fun, and especially during this lockdown that we’re currently in, it’s been so nice to be completely lose myself in another world, another set of lives. Trent Rexroth and Edie Van Der Zee are characters we first meet in BROKEN KNIGHT as Luna Rexroth’s parents. Now I have to be honest with you, they were the parents of the ASH lot that I noticed the least. I definitely got emotional when Luna and Trent spoke in his office together, but beyond that, during BK I didn’t see them a lot. Oh how dumb I was! So much drama and angst makes their story.

“Whatever we were, we were toxic. A lullaby on a thoroughly scratched record that keeps hiccuping again and again on the line that you hate. This can’t happen. This can’t happen. This won’t happen.” 

Trent is thirty three, father to four year old Luna, and stupidly rich and single. Edie is eighteen, a surfer, and under her dads thumb. There’s our first clue to why there will be so much drama in SCANDALOUS, it’s so very very forbidden between them because of their ages. Although it’s legal because Edie is eighteen, it’s like she isn’t a teenager, and Trent is a grown arse man. Their chemistry is quite confusing as you can feel the undercurrent between them, but you don’t know why. Trent first sees Edie at a barbecue for Knight’s birthday at Dean’s house, and Edie is young and angsty looking beside her dad. Trent is older and with his daughter clinging to his leg, grilling burgers, and in a completely different time in his life. What chemistry could there possibly there? Well, turns out a lot. 

“My father asked me about Rexroth, my mom asked me about my father, and no one asked me about me. Or Theo. Or surfing.” 

I liked that we got to see some interactions and the love between Luna and Trent, as I was curious to see how he’d be as a parent considering what id seen of him so far in DEFY, VICIOUS and RUCKUS. He was just as much a player as Dean, but he was now a single parent. Turns out, he was strict with food, but loving with everything else. Luna is mute, so seeing Trent try to pull any sort of reaction out of her was heartwarming and breaking at the same time. I especially adored the realisation of the seahorse. Super cute. 

“Seahorses are Luna’s favourite animal because the male seahorse is the only animal in nature to carry the baby and not the mother. The male seahorse is the one to incubate the offspring. To fall pregnant. To nest.”

I enjoyed getting to meet Bane who I’ve curios about this whole series, because who is he? Where does he come in? And know it know and it’s because of Edie. Edie is young and so burdened in her life by her parents, that all she really loves is Theo and surfing. Meeting Trent, though not through the best of ways, is an eye opening experience for her, and eventually leads her to Luna. Whilst the interactions between Trent and Edie are hot and raw, what we get to see of Edie with Luna, are magical. They’re soft and engaging and innocent. Edie slowly starts to pull Luna out of her shell, and nudges Trent in the direction of sign language as a method of communication. Watching Trent watch Edie with Luna was special because you got to watch a man who you otherwise thought was strong, isolated and hardened, become a gooey mess for his kid. 

“You fight the tide. You fling your arms, kicking your legs, trying to escape it, overpower it. The secret is to go with the flow. The secret is to ride the wave. Don’t be afraid to get wet.”