To Sir Phillip, With Love - Julia Quinn

Initial draw: ✰✰✰
Character development: ✰✰
Plot/Writing style: ✰✰
My rating: ⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Sir Phillip knew from his correspondence with his dead wife's distant cousin that Eloise Bridgerton was a spinster, and so he'd proposed, figuring that she'd be homely and unassuming, and more than a little desperate for an offer of marriage. Except...she wasn't. The beautiful woman on his doorstep was anything but quiet, and when she stopped talking long enough to close her mouth, all he wanted to do was kiss her...

Eloise Bridgerton couldn't marry a man she had never met! But then she started thinking...and wondering...and before she knew it she was in a hired carriage in the middle of the night, on her way to meet the man she hoped might be her perfect match. Except...he wasn't. Her perfect husband wouldn't be so moody and ill-mannered. And he certainly should have mentioned that he had two young - and decided unruly - children, as much in need of a mother as Phillip is in need of a wife."

 Eloise Bridgerton deserves better! This could be my whole review, honestly. Her entire story was just...such a letdown. She is built up as such a strong, independent, intelligent character through the first four books, and then BOOM as soon as Penelope decides she's getting married, suddenly Eloise is like "oh fuck I need to find a man, like, stat." Nooooooooo! Why are we erasing everything good that has been established about Eloise as a character with the premise of this book? Why?!

Add to that the fact that Phillip is a complete fucking dumpster fire of a character, and it adds up to an incredibly disappointing book. If he was amazing, I could maybe, maybe forgive the premise and wrap my brain around Eloise needing to meet him and quickly falling in love with him, but not only are the snippets of the letters they share to each other completely benign and sometimes outright dull, Phillip is such an unrelenting douchebaggy drip of a person! Uuuuuuugh I haaaaaaaaaaaaate iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. I wish I could be more eloquent about it, but I just...I don't have it in me. Start to finish, BLEH. 

I'll end with this - was I the only person who was reading Eloise as queer throughout the first four books? I mean, I will freely admit, give me an opening and I'll read anything as queer. [Premise] but make it queer, always a recipe for success. But FOR REAL, can we let Eloise be gay and have a great time? Please? In my brain that will be what actually happened. This book no longer exists for me.