Rating: 1 out of 5.
What it’s about:
Daphne is the Regency era version of “one of the guys.” Despite the fact that she is old enough to be an eligible bachelorette, she’s friends with most of the eligible men and they don’t really see her as the dateable. Simon, the Duke of Hastings, is perhaps the most eligible bachelor in town – he’s also close friends with Daphne’s older brother. Once they get to talking, they decide that pretending to date is an easy way to get both of their families off their backs about marriage and, as anyone who has read a romance knows, things get complicated from there. This is a story that hits on a few different tropes: Regency marriage obsession, fake dating, “not like other girls”, and dating siblings friends (just to name a few.)
Why I decided to read it:
Pride and Prejudice is my favorite book of all time, so when I started seeing ads for the Bridgerton series on Netflix, I was curious to know more. When I saw that it was a book, I added it to my TBR (though it wasn’t near the top.) Then, my mother in law started reading the books – after she watched the show – and insisted that I would love them. She passed books 2 & 3 to me, so I sought out book one to read before I jumped into those. (Spoiler alert: I did not end up reading them.)
The Pros:
- It’s a book that, after Netflix made it a show, might have gotten a few new people into reading.
The Cons:
As you might have guessed from the one star review – I don’t give those often – I thought there were a lot more cons than pros. In fact, from as objective of a standpoint as I can give, I would not recommend this book to others. Should I have DNF’d it? Probably. But between knowing that my MIL was going to ask me about it (she liked it) and hoping beyond hope that it might turn around and get better by the end, I pushed on.
- In the beginning, Daphne seems like an alright heroine of the story. Despite the “I’m not like other girls” vibe being a bit cringey, it seemed like the author was going for an Elizabeth Bennet type character. She was uninterested in the frivolity of other women who only thought about romance, and instead was clever and witty. She’s sharp as a tack for the beginning half of the book. This seems like a pro – and I would argue that it would be if she stayed that way – but the moment that she ends up getting together with Simon, Daphne suddenly becomes completely mindless and naïve. She suddenly knows nothing about the world or romance (the latter of which could maybe be excused by her lack of experience) and becomes air-headed. Her wittiness falls entirely by the wayside and she goes from strong, bold female to swooning, fainting-couch caricature in a matter of pages. And it’s a shame, honestly. She went from somewhat dynamic to totally flat.
- The entire relationship between Simon and Daphne’s brother has lots of awkward possessiveness over Daphne in a way that maybe makes sense for Regency era, but on top of the other cringey-ness of the story, stands out as kind off-putting. The men in this story treat Daphne like property a lot of the time and maybe it’s just my inexperience with historical fiction, but it felt icky.
But cringey-ness alone does not a one star review make. I can appreciate that some books are not for me. But what comes next is the biggest con of the book for me and the reason I can’t in my right mind recommend this book to others. And this can serve as your trigger warning if you require one (though it’s the same trigger warning as the book, if you’ve read it.) We’re about to talk about the rape scene.
- Simon has a bunch of issues with his lineage (leading him not to want to have children) and instead of voicing this concern to his new wife, he just tells her he can’t have kids and uses the “pull out” method to ensure that they don’t. He hopes that his wife, being as naïve as she has suddenly become, won’t realize that they aren’t having the same sexual experience as her child-bearing friends and relatives. But once she gets to talking with the other ladies in her social circle, she discovers the reason she’s not pregnant yet isn’t because he can’t have kids, just that he won’t.
So Daphne decides she’s going to get him drunk and have her way with him. And she does. Despite him LITERALLY telling her to stop while she’s on top of him, she carries on until she gets what she wants. Afterward, she has some internal monologuing about how she knows that she probably shouldn’t have done that, but then she actively decides that she doesn’t care. (Framing it in a “he’s my husband and I deserve a baby, so he needed to do his duty” kind of way.)
And as if that wasn’t bad enough (one could maybe argue that that’s not really glorifying rape, though I’d disagree) this entire incident is all it took to prove to Simon that he actually does want a gaggle of kids! It just took him being forced to father one against his will for him to suddenly realize it’s actually what he wanted all along. (Are you grossed out yet? I am.)
Final Thoughts:
I think that if you’re looking for a Regency era, faking dating romance with marriage, babies, and family as the end goal, I feel pretty confident that you could find that in a book that doesn’t use rape to get there and is likely much less cringey. (I can’t recommend any myself as this was my first foray into current Regency era romances, and might be my last honestly, but I am sure there are better ones out there.) So, unfortunately, this one is one star for me and I did not continue on with the series. I also don’t plan on watching the show now. I wanted it to become a new favorite, but now it’s just a red flag for me if someone says they loved this book.
