“I was prepared to die on that dueling field. Rather than marry you and take your dream away, I would have died. For you. You were the one who insisted upon this union. You told me I was enough.”
I gotta admit, I genuinely thought I would end up reading the Bridgerton books after watching the show. I try not to be one for dumb fads, but it was being talked about enough that I figured, hey, this show has to have something fantastic in it if it’s that popular. Okay, and Alex Meyers talked me into it.
So, naturally, since I’m such a book fanatic that automatically translates into “I must now read the book and compare.”
Well, almost…
You see, I had a couple criticisms of the show. The biggest one was the issue of consent, because damn they royally fucked that up. It wasn’t just that Daphne was woefully in the dark about what it all meant—and sure, there’s historical context and all that, but come on—and kind of taken advantage of. But, there’s literal and intentional rape later on that everyone just brushed off because it was a woman doing it and she was angry cause he lied to her.
And fuck, I was not expecting that.
So, not only did she completely lose all right and credibility in her anger…she took away his ability to consent. And, spoiler alert I suppose, but she didn’t really ever learn from this, apologize, or deal with any real consequences. In fact, she just gets what she wants in the end. I’m honestly still in a state of complete WTF over this.
And apparently the book is worse…
Okay, so I hated those moments, the second one more so than the first, shockingly enough. But I did genuinely enjoy the show, despite thinking Lady Whistledown’s identity reveal was incredibly dumb, and wouldn’t have minded reading the book as a result.
Then Jack Edwards read it for me and I watched his review. I also read this review, further cementing my serious issues with this book as a whole.
And YIKES
Honestly, I genuinely do not think this book is worth reading. It’s bad enough that it was problematic in the first place as a show, but I cannot believe how terrible it actually is as a book. Thank goodness I stumbled across Jack’s review because I saved myself from a ginormous waste of time.
Plus, if you liked the show because it attempted diversity and conversations about race—not saying it succeeded, exactly, but I did like aspects of it—well, you don’t want to read the book. Cause every character in the book is…white. I’m not sure why this book was chosen as the source material for the direction the show went in—maybe it was the Whistledown stuff?—but…yeah, it’s not great.
I’ll pass. Thanks.
| Reader Fox Links |
Reader Fox 