Julia Quinn's Bridgerton books

Nicola: On the advice of my esteemed co-blogger, over the last couple of weeks I have jumped into the Julia Quinn/Bridgerton books with both feet. Errr, eyes? Anyway.

There are eight books in the main series, one for each Bridgerton sibling. Due to a combination of UBS availability, lack of patience, and issues with reading comprehension, here is the order I read them in: 8,1,2,7,3,5,4,6. Happily, that means I can vouch for the ability of each book to stand alone.

O’Donovan has said that the great thing about the Bridgerton books is the loving and witty interaction of the large Bridgerton clan, and the ongoing glimpses of the various inter-relationships. I’m going to take it a step further and say that the great appeal of the Bridgerton family is that they are a literary and real-world rarity: a functional-- as in the opposite of dysfunctional-- family.

O’Donovan: I’ve been musing about this since Nicola first mentioned this notion and I completely agree … and yet. As someone who grew up in a family that is almost sickeningly functional and strong, I shy away from “functional” as a description precisely because it has a connotation of perfection, at least as people use it in talking about families.

Nicola: Funny, I always thought the word “functional” was sort of damnation by faint praise. As in, defined by a lack of deviant horrible behavior….

O’Donovan: What I love about Quinn is that her families are functional – if the function of a family is to love and support one another – but they also manage to be irritating, challenging, suffocating and quirky. I like that she gives us something better than Ozzie-and-Harriet-style perfection: It’s a bunch of very “real” fictional people all bound by a commitment to each other.

The funny thing is, that’s pretty much the description of all the best (romantic) love stories, too.

Nicola: yep, check, check, and check. I also grew up really really lucky: although mine is a family of 3 girls, and not the 8 siblings of Bridgerton fame, I have a large, close extended family and that’s a really accurate description. There’s lots of internal joshing and teasing that occasionally approaches jabs and pokes, but to the outside world? It’s a united front, all the way. Are they perfect? Heck no. Do they drive me crazy? Oh yes. Would I change the slightest thing about any of them? Not for the sun and the moon and the stars.

So, then, moving on: when I first got married, my mother-in-law gave me a book called The Good Marriage. Without going into a lot of details, what the authors identified as a “rescue marriage” was of particular interest to me. In trying to add some context for you, I find my options are the one-sentence sound-byte:

Description of a rescue marriage: The healing that takes place during the course of the marriage is the central theme.

Or alternatively, four chapters worth of empirical description--you’ll have to get hold of a copy of the book for that.

The bottom line is, I recognize most of the Bridgerton-Spouse relationships as rescue marriages, or at least one such flavor. The Bridgertons, by and large, are fully realized, emotionally healthy adults, though of course not without their insecurities and yet-to-be-fulfilled dreams—and isn’t that a refreshing change of pace? Their spouses are mostly abused and damaged, feeling by turns envious of the Bridgerton family warmth, unworthy to join it, overwhelmed by it, and finally, embraced and healed by it. That last phase is particularly delightful to see in small bits and pieces of later books and epilogues, and a big part of the appeal that O’Donovan spoke of in her post on Relational Romance .

Does this mean that the Bridgerton half of the couple is the rock, the strength, selflessly giving to a weaker spouse who’s a needy, emotional black hole? Well, no, because that would be really irritating, not to mention boring. What most of the Bridgerton sibs have in common is a guilty wish to be more separate from the pack, to be recognized as an individual.

And the non-Bridgerton spouses are anything but weak. It’s more a case of “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger*”, and the experiences of these partners give them an almost Herculean strength. Watching them learn to accept a partner, to set down a little of their burden, is a moving experience every time. Often, their difficulties are what allow them to see beyond the façade of Bridgerton strength to the individual’s needs and the weaknesses that they don’t dare show.

O’Donovan: This is a very key point, I think, but I want to address the one Bridgeton book where it was turned on its head. In When He Was Wicked, I think Francesca is the “rescued” half, and she is rescued, at least in part, from her stifling identity as one of eight Bridgerton siblings. That turnabout has made it one of my favorite JQ books, and I thought it widened the scope of the series from the “cool family rescues the world’s strays” theme to the breadth of strengths that you describe here.

Nicola: Now that’s interesting, because Francesca’s partner in WHWW, while not abused, has certainly done some emotional suffering, and I don’t think of Francesca as in need of a rescue. But I agree that they are the most evenly matched couple, in those terms. I also loved this book (just finished it, in fact) and thought it was interesting that while I was formulating all these thoughts about the Bridgerton family, here was this book waiting for me that takes place almost entirely separately from the family. It’s not that Francesca doesn’t seem like part of the family, it’s more that the family and its dynamics don’t really play such a major role in this story as it does in the others. And to be honest, I have a certain soft spot for heroines who aren’t virgins. (Make of that what you will.)

Julia Quinn does a very nice job, all in all, of consistently demonstrating that a person’s greatest strength can also be their greatest weakness. The spouses that the Bridgertons find themselves with are tenderly complementary in both ways.

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* "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Ugh. I hate that sentiment: it basically rationalizes abuse. It's true that crappy experiences CAN make you stronger, but they can also wear you down and damage you without killing you..... well, anyway. Pet peeve. Sorry for the tangent.

Relational romance

Talking with Nicola about J.R. Ward’s heroes – and, specifically, why I am so drawn to that series, almost despite myself – I keep coming back to the non-romantic relationships in the books.

In the industry, these characters are called “secondary.” Hmph, I say. Secondary to what? To the romance? I’ll agree with that, but not with the idea that they are secondary to the action or the nature of the novel.

Let’s face it: Straight romance doesn’t have a ton of surprises to offer us. It can be well written or badly written, sweet or erotic, cozy or adventurous, but there’s rarely a question of whether it will end happily. It will end happily. That’s the point.

So how do we set one romance novel apart from the others? I would argue that the best books on the market today are the ones where the secondary (and tertiary!) characters are as real and engaging as the hero and heroine.

I thought I would make a list of authors (and/or series) that I love because of the secondary characters:

Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton books
I wonder if this series (beginning with The Duke and I) would be nearly so fun without the initially-unseen-except-for-chapter-headings gossip queen Lady Whistledown. Or, I ask you, without the other seven siblings mucking things up (or solving things) for whichever Bridgerton is the present protagonist? One of my favorite Bridgerton scenes has almost nothing to do with “romance,” and everything to do with how the heroine fits in with the hero’s family. In this scene, Kate has been invited to play croquet (or Pall Mall), and they’re setting up the course in the hero (Anthony’s) absence:

"Let me take half of those,” Daphne said, reaching for the wickets in her brother’s hand. “Miss Sheffield and I … that is, Kate and I”—she flashed Kate a friendly grin—“will set up three of them and you and Simon can do the rest.”
Before Kate could even venture an opinion, Daphne had taken her by the arm and was leading her toward the lake.
“We have to make absolutely certain that Anthony loses his ball in the water,” Daphne muttered. “I have never forgiven him for last time. I thought Benedict and Colin were going to die laughing. And Anthony was the worst. He just stood there smirking. Smirking!” She turned to Kate with a most beleaguered expression. “No one smirks quite like my eldest brother.”
“I know,” Kate muttered under her breath.
Thankfully, the duchess hadn’t heard her. “If I could have killed him, I vow I would have.”
“What will happen once all your balls are lost in the lake?” Kate couldn’t resist asking. “I haven’t played with you lot yet, but you do seem rather competitive, and it seems …”
“That it would be inevitable?” Daphne finished for her. She grinned. “You’re probably right. We have no sense of sportsmanship when it comes to Pall Mall. When a Bridgerton picks up a mallet, we become the worst sorts of cheaters and liars. Truly, the game is less about winning than making sure the other players lose. … It seems a waste, I know, but worth it to humiliate my brothers.”

Jennifer Crusie’s anything
I’ve often sold my friends on Jennifer Crusie’s books by telling them that they will never laugh as hard reading any other romance novel. She’s funny and the wit is sly, and a lot of it has to do with secondary characters acting as the voices of reason.

Let’s face it: The early stages of love make us all behave like idiots, and it’s only right that the love portrayed in romance novels should occasionally turn our heroes and heroines into idiots, too. And, to complete the cycle, that they have friends and families that will happily – gleefully, even – point it out.

Another thing to love about Crusie is that a lot of the tension in her romances comes from her couples having to deal with the insane vagaries of everyday life. They’re not so much beset by pirate ships and spy rings as they are plagued by families whose every-family-has-one craziness is magnified. Also? She’s not afraid to put a funny line in a woman’s mouth, and that’s a quality much to be prized. (Don’t you get sick of men being the only ones who are allowed to be overtly comic?)

Favorite Crusie book has got to be the utterly priceless Bet Me, although you honestly can’t go wrong with anything she writes, and you’ll definitely fall in love with her books co-written with Bob Mayer, and her books about the Dempsey family, starting with Welcome to Temptation.

Nora Roberts’ The Quinn Legacy
This is the story of three (well, four) adopted brothers who are dealing with their father’s death and the ongoing fight to keep custody of the fourth, significantly younger, brother. That tension and trouble runs throughout the first three books and it’s simply lovely.

As is usual for Roberts’s series, there are three basic “types”: The glamorous jetsetter sibling, the sensible, type-A sibling, and the salt-of-the-earth, quietly deep sibling. I think she does better cast development with the Quinns than with any other series; the brothers (all of whom end up with their own books) are nuanced and rude to each other and messy and imperfect in ways that are true to their typical Roberts archetype.

I’d argue that the secondary characters are fewer and shallower with Roberts than with other writers, but she’s one of the queens of the genre and this is her best work (imho), so I thought I should include it.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ football and golf books
Whaaa? Football and golf?

Football. And. Golf. Take it as an article of faith that anyone who loves character-driven, secondary-character packed romance will adore any SEP book that includes a pro athlete. (Which means football or golf; she hasn’t yet ventured into luge or pro wrestling, which would strain my faith as a reader.)

As I write this post, I’m discovering something interesting: I get really engaged in books that show the heroes (in particular) in a range of emotionally complicated situations (but that’s probably another blog post). SEP definitely deals those out, with difficult families, tenuous relationships, trust issues … you name it.

Perhaps my favorite SEP example is … hmph. It’s tough to isolate one, but I think it’s got to be Heaven, Texas, in which an entire town plays a role as a secondary character. There’s also the hero’s fantastic, widowed mother and the entire staff of the Curl Up and Dye hair salon. Gracie Snow (the heroine) ends up having to contend with all kinds of issues related to Bobby Tom Denton’s status as favorite son, and that means SEP got to really play around with the secondary characters and how they throw roadblocks in the path of, you know, True Love.


So, there you have it. My top picks for relational romances. Other authors who deserve a mention (but haven’t published anything that’s rung my bell in a while): Judith McNaught (try Perfect, a contemporary with one of my all-time favorite heroines) and Julie Garwood (The Secret should start you off well if you like historicals set in Scotland – or even if you don’t).

And, because I am on a serious fantasy and vampire kick right now, when I’m talking about relational, uh, quasi-romance, I simply must recommend all of Kelley Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld books (start with Bitten).

Finally, for fantasy books with great loving relationships and romance that’s stretched across a trilogy, Patricia Briggs’ Mercedes Thompson books (starting with Moon Called) and Anne Bishop’s Dark Jewels trilogy (my absolute favorite comfort books ever, starting with Daughter of the Blood) are must-reads, but be warned: They have some seriously dark themes and very graphic violence.

Obsessed with JR Ward

OK, I swear, this will be the last JR Ward post for awhile… at least until the next book comes out in June. But you know how when you re-read stuff, you notice different things than you did the first time around? So reading five of them within a couple of days connected some dots for me in a way I didn’t get when I was consuming them the first time through. Some of the themes that arc through multiple books are easier to appreciate the second time around.

WARNING: MAY CONTAIN MILD SPOILERS. Basically, there's nothing here that you wouldn't glean from reading the back covers, but if you're just starting the series, there might be some give-aways.

BUTCH AND VISHOUS
I’m particularly fascinated by the relationship between Butch and Vishous. It’s a lovely thing to behold, seeds planted and subtly nurtured in quiet but telling scenes through all the books. There is a connection between them that is part brother, part comrade-in-arms, part lover, and yet it is none of these and there is something else there that defies easy definition. I love this scene from the first book after the guys pretty much all go on an old-fashioned bender:

Wrath went upstairs, wondering who’d slept where. He knocked on one of the guest room doors, and Butch answered. The human was drying his hair with a towel. Had another wrapped around his waist.
“You know where V is?” Wrath asked.
“Yeah, he’s shaving.” The cop nodded over his shoulder and stepped aside.
“You need me, boss?” V called out from the bathroom.
Wrath chuckled. “Well, isn’t this cozy.”
The “fuck-off” came from both of them…

Homoerotica is nothing new in vampire literature*; usually it’s a sexualization of the bond between a “senior” vampire and one that he has created or “turned,” with the exchange of blood and the death/rebirth of the new vampire portrayed as a moment of ecstasy. Ward definitely pays homage to this theme, but has her own twist on it, since her vampires don’t “turn” humans.

One of the most poignant moments in V’s character arc occurs in Butch’s book, Lover Revealed, when V accidentally catches sight of Butch making love to Marissa, and it's referred to again as a flashback near the beginning of V's book:

What he’d seen weeks ago and now remembered had been caught by mistake, but he’d macked the scene like a pickpocket anyway, stashing it in his frontal lobe even though it didn’t belong to him.

Weeks ago he’d seen Butch and Marissa…laying together. It had been when the cop was at Havers’s clinic on quarantine. A video camera was set up in the corenr of the hospital room, and V had caught the two of them on a computer monitor: she dressed in a vibrant peach gown, he in a hospital john. They’d been kissing long and hot, their bodies straining for sex. {snip}

It had been beautiful, the two of them together. Nothing like the sex with hard edges V had had all his life. There had been love and intimacy and… kindness.

Although we don’t quite understand why this affects him so deeply until we get his backstory in Lover Unbound, it’s undeniably a pivotal moment for him and there are many emotions at play.

Now that Butch’s story and V’s have been told, and the tension between them largely resolved, I hope we still get to see them interact and watch that relationship mature into still something else. I am truly fascinated. (I know, I said that before.)

O’Donovan notes: You know, until this particular relationship/book, homoerotic imagery in fantasy novels just inspired a big “meh” for me. But there’s something about the tension here – and not just the sexual tension, but the stress-tension on their friendship – that is so evocative of many tense friendships-with-men I have had, and I find it fascinating. Say this for J.R. Ward: Her characters feel real.

What I find especially interesting and curious, though, is that the relationships that have the most intensity (as I read it, anyway) are this fraught one between Butch and V, and the parent-child relationship between Tohr, Wellsie and John, and then between Zsadist and John.

I suspect the strictures of the romance novel format aren’t working in Ward’s favor, in terms of developing a slow burn male-female relationship (although she does a decent job with Z and Bella). I also suspect that I’m reading this from the place where I’m living right now, when friendships and family are trumping romance, and outperforming romantic love on every level. Perhaps because that’s how I’m reading, it makes me wonder where Ward is as she’s writing. Why are her friendships and families so much deeper than her love relationships? Hmm.

Nicola responds: I don’t know that I’d say they’re deeper. They are absolutely more nuanced and layered though. The Wellsie-Tohr-John deal isn’t as affecting, IMO, just because of its brevity, at least so far. Another one with potential is the Bella-Rehv sibling link.

O’Donovan: I think the thing that’s getting me about the Wellsie-Tohr-John thing is that it’s really the only adult/“child” interaction we have in the books.

I would dearly love to see (beyond the snippet we’re granted in the epilogue) how life changes around the frat house mansion once Bella and Zsadist’s daughter is born. I hope vampire babies are just especially good, because – as any parent of small children can attest – it’s basically sleep deprivation central for the first two years or more. Really, would you want your spouse going out and fighting superhuman evil on less than a good day's sleep? OTOH, they have Fritz and Co., and Fritz can fix anything. I used to want a house elf, but now I want a Fritz.

Oh! But all of this reminds me that one thing that I do love about this series is that, because the brothers are so wrapped up in each other’s lives, we continue to see their stories develop after the big reveal of “I love you/let’s get married/happily ever after.” It’s not something we’re often granted in romance novels (Stephanie Laurens being an exception), even in novels with recurring characters.

Nicola responds: Absolutely. I’ve said several times that I thought Wrath’s story was the weakest. Why is that? When I re-read it, I liked it just fine, but what it lacks is that connection and day-to-day interaction between Wrath the other Brothers. As king, he is necessarily somewhat removed from them, and since he took himself out of the fighting roster upon ascending the throne, he added another measure of distance. V and Butch and Rhage, Phury and Zsadist. Each of the other guys has a network and hierarchy of bonds with the others, but Wrath is removed from it. Not sure there’s any getting around that, given the structure of the Brotherhood.

Oh, and I totally want a Fritz. The bottomless money resources are pretty appealing too.

THE SCRIBE VIRGIN & THE CHOSEN

The mythology around the Scribe Virgin’s Chosen is a little muddier for me, though it looks like we should get a little more background on that with Lover Enshrined. I get the sense that the rules of “the other side” are not quite as well-defined as they are for the Brothers, like there’s definitely more making-it-up-as-you-go-along happening. Why “Scribe Virgin”, when she is neither a scribe nor a virgin? (Discuss among yourselves.) The SV is emerging as an actual character, with her involvement in V’s life and the intriguing mention of his twin sister Payne stashed in a closet in suspended animation--and the title of the next book makes me think that maybe she’s the one for Phury). It’s hard to reconcile the warrior’s bonding instinct with the role of the Primale. And why wasn’t Wrath tapped for the job, since he has the purest bloodlines? I know, this was explained, but it still seems wrong to me – a big deal was made of the fact that Wrath is the last full-blooded vampire on earth, and the various characters are always going on and on about how “pure” the blood is from one vamp or another. Ergo, SV probably should’ve chosen someone from Wrath’s line to mate with, doncha think? Sigh. I suppose I’ll have to let that one go.

O’Donovan: Is it wrong that I imagine the SV as the creepy little girl from Poltergeist? I know she’s supposed to be this stunningly lovely woman who glows, but all the veiling and so forth just make me think, eek, creepy stunted child-woman-crone under a sheet. I can’t imagine her developing into a sexual character in this series, but I do like the development of her relationship with Vishous; my jury is still deliberating over the Big Surprise of Payne’s existence. On the other hand, it’s an interesting cat to set among the pigeons.

As far as the “purity of blood” issue goes, I honestly think about hemophilia and royal inbreeding and hybrid vigor and all that stuff when it comes to the Chosen. Let’s have some mongrel blood! It’s a shame that Butch is all spoken for.

Nicola responds: But Butch is of Wrath’s line! Though I guess it’s pretty dilute naturally since he didn’t go through transition on his own. The future of The Chosen has some potential as a story element now that the psycho Directrix has been deposed.

O’Donovan: I guess the whole cloistered nun theme leaves me a little cold, and they just don’t seem very … vampirey … to me. And if they are vampires (as they should be, because they’re (a) SV’s creation and (b) fathered by members of the Brotherhood and by the Chosen) then (c) I want to know what they eat.

Nicola responds: Good points. I’ve been wondering that myself. Maybe the SV has some kind of magic that she works.

SPECULATION
While it doesn’t have the elegance of Butch and V’s relationship, I am really enjoying John’s story throughout the books. Once Ward has exhausted her backlog of characters – Rehvenge, Tohr, John, and, I suspect, Dr. Manello-- we can potentially look forward to a new generation of warriors, with Blay and Qhuinn (the detail about his mismatched eyes is intriguing), and probably a few more of their classmates. I figure that Payne and Xhex deserve their own books, but they may end up as mates to one of the males. I’m interested to see where Ward takes us with the world of the symphaths, too.

O’Donovan: I’m waiting (eagerly) to see if the female vampire protagonists (which I think Xhex and Payne are poised to be) will (a) merit their own books that don’t star members of the Black Dagger Brotherhood as the hero and (b) if any of the female characters will ever form bonds that are as interesting as the male characters’ bonds. I also want to know if the Black Dagger Brotherhood will ever include women. (That seems unlikely, somehow, but shouldn’t there be a more equal female group, a strong female group? The Chosen obviously suck at this and, in a society governed by a quasi-goddess, you’d think women and female relationships would be, uh, bigger, stronger, more intense, more impressive.)

I will also be thoroughly bummed if Xhex and John end up together – which will feel like Xhex only “earned” a book as an accessory to John, when she’s pretty interesting in her own right, and ditto for the Payne/Phury connection – although my money’s actually on Payne/Rehvenge or Payne/Manny, because I think Phury’s going to end up with the Chosen from Lover Unbound.

Nicola responds: I think it just gets back to the fact that Ward’s men are a million times more interesting than her women. I suspect if you compared her heroines to any other popular author’s, they’d be fine, but up against these magnificent men, they definitely suffer by comparison.

Xhex doesn't seem right for John, to me -- something about her androgyny and his past kind of bothers me, not that she isn't awesome. And yeah, it would be nice to see the women doing something other than rich-woman-charity-work. I mean, I SO cannot see Xhex planning a solstice ceremony involving a bunch of apples. You feel me, sister?

O’Donovan: Uh, true. My sister. </pulls on shitkickers, goes to fight lessers >

Nicola again: You know what would be cool? I think? Is to follow John’s generation for a century or so and let them fuck around and procreate all over the damn place before they get all crazy-bonded. If we can extrapolate that 200-300 years is about right for the males to mature enough to fall in love, and they’re only 25 when they hit transition, I think it would be kind of inconsistent to have them falling straight into The Brotherhood. Though John is an exception, of course.

O’Donovan: From your lips to J.R. Ward’s editors.

Nicola again: Oooh, or locate another pocket of warrior descendants that have been isolated somewhere else geographically. Because really, 6 guys in the whole wide world? ain’t so many.

O’Donovan:More of J.R. Ward's heroes? Nothing to hate about that.

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*I googled up some links to articles about homoeroticism in Dracula, Nosferatu, and Interview With a Vampire, but there's a billion items of varying literary depth, and none stood out as just the right link. If you're interested in that tangent, I trust your google skills are up to it-- there's plenty to choose from.