As far as better-than-average romance novels go, I like the Bridgerton series by Quinn quite a bit. It's got a sprawling cast of characters (8 Bridgerton children) who pop up in book after book, including unfortunate neighbor Penelope Featherington, and notorious gossip columnist Lady Whistledown. I never love any of the Bridgertons as much as I love the brothers in Loretta Chase's books, but they're not jerks, at least, and that counts for a lot.
Both of these are slightly more complicated than the average romance novel plot. In When He Was Wicked, our hero has fallen desperately in love with the heroine -- who has just married his best friend/cousin. (Where is the threesome??) She's lovely, and she adores him, but not romantically, and she really loves her husband. (Normally she'd be married to a Wicked Awful Man and be happy to be widowed after her loveless marriage, but not here.) Then, naturally, the husband kicks it and they all have to deal with the consequences.
I really enjoyed this up until nearly the end, where it got much weaker. Instead of a Big Secret that everyone refuses to tell each other, the protagonists just keep leaving whenever they get near to talking. It was frustrating. They just keep running away or storming out or going to India for four years. And then at the end everything works out really quickly, despite all the problems up until then, which I didn't appreciate.
Romancing Mister Bridgerton, on the other hand, is so good. Our heroine is the now 28 year old Penelope, who never got proposed to and was left to get old and watch over her mother, who sucks. She's shy and not super pretty and has been in love with Colin "the scoundrel" Bridgerton for years, but it's not until she realizes that as a spinster she can say and do pretty much what she pleases that she starts kicking ass and taking names. (And Colin is all 'You're smart, and that's so hot! How does no one get how hot you are??' I love that as a plot point.)
About 2/3 of the way through someone is revealed as the real gossip writer Lady Whisteldown, who's been through all the other books. It's an interesting reveal, but the character is someone we've heard talking about Lady Whistledown repeatedly, and the dialogue doesn't make any sense after the reveal. It was such an out-of-the-blue revelation that I thought it was meant as a joke or a lie, and when I went back and re-read the first half of the book lots of the inner dialogue we'd heard from this character was a down right lie. I hate that.
When he was... Grade: C
Romancing... Grade: B
originally posted 2007
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