pamela
It's been no secret throughout my reviews that I have not enjoyed Julia Quinn's Bridgerton books. That being said, To Sir Phillip, With Love reaches an all-time low. This book is absolutely abhorrent in its treatment of mental health and domestic abuse. And through all of that, the titular Sir Phillip is painted as the victim, when he's, at best, an emotionally absent father, and at worst, an actual rapist.
To Sir Phillip, With Love opens, as all Bridgerton books do, with a look into the past. We see Sir Phillip's loveless marriage and witness his severely depressed wife, Marina, attempt suicide. I'm not marking this as a spoiler as it literally happens in the first few pages. What follows is a book that, for all intents and purposes, characterises Marina as the villain. We never learn anything more about her other than she's sad all the time, which made Sir Phillip's life very difficult.
Every one of Sir Phillip's appalling actions is characterised as someone else's fault. He neglects his children because his own father was abusive. The sadness in his marriage is Marina's fault because she just didn't try hard enough to be happy. He even goes so far as to negate Eloise's unhappiness in their relationship because he had it worse, and he's happy now, so how dare Eloise believe their marriage has problems. This whole book and Sir Phillip's character were just non-stop red flags, and I was absolutely not here for that. But when Phillip describes raping his wife, but it's ok, because he felt really, really bad about it afterwards, I had to put the book down for a good few minutes because I was shaking with rage. The book then once again paints him as the victim because he, poor soul, didn't have sex for eight years. Sir Phillip is the worst. His whole character arc is built around marriage for the following reasons a) a mother for his children so he can completely ignore them to dick about with his flowers b) getting a housekeeper so he can stop worrying about anything to do with his property and dick about with his flowers and c) find a warm, happy vagina so he can have sex again and stop dealing with sad people and dick about with his flowers.
As for the sex scenes, we once again have the JQ trifecta of fingers, boobs, missionary. This time though, we have an added scene where JQ weirdly announces to the world that she's never had anyone satisfyingly go down on her. It's a problem I have with a lot of these romance novels, where they describe pretty standard sex acts in a way where you just know they've either never done it or never climaxed from it. But of course, despite being completely inexperienced, Sir Philip is just an absolute wonder, and Eloise is just a wet puddle at his feet. Through the power of their unassailable chemistry, Eloise can look past the fact that Sir Phillip is an unconscionable prick, and within the space of a few short weeks, they're madly in love, blissfully happy, and the years of neglect his Phillip's children endured just melts away because the plot needed a happy ending.
To Sir Phillip, With Love was undoubtedly the worst of the Bridgerton books so far. The series is like a runaway train, and I can't get off. I can't imagine them getting any worse than this one, though, so I'm going to forge ahead! What can I say; I'm a sucker for punishment.
