Reviews with content warning for Fatphobia - An Offer From a Gentleman

Have you read or seen an adaptation of Cinderella? Yes? You know how this plays out. Sophie is the "ward" of the Count, though no one ever mentions that she's clearly his byblow. He marries an evil woman with two daughters, and promptly dies. And Sophie becomes the unpaid house slave. Sound familiar? It should. It's Cinderella. This adaptation includes a masked ball, as well, where our Sophie meets Benedict Bridgerton, though she doesn't recognize him. He likes how she likes him for him, not for being Bridgerton No 2. The talk, dance, and kiss, and at the stroke of midnight, Sophie runs, as she has to be back to the house before her evil stepmother.

Not realizing the situation, Benedict visits the house, holding the glove Sophie left behind. The stepmother figures out that the woman Benedict was looking for wasn't one of her daughters, but Sophie and kicks her out of the house. And we skip 2 years, when Benedict finds Sophie being harassed by several drunk lords and rescues her, only to fall ill.

An Offer From A Gentleman is Cinderella, which by any other name would smell as sweet. There's some misunderstandings, some very Regency-era personalities, and an arrest. But, as expected, it ends well.

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book_banter's review against another edition

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emotional fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Benedict was nice enough until he didn’t get his way.
I don’t know why I find these books so readable.

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julesadventurezone's review against another edition

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adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

I quite liked Sophie and I understand why Benedict fell in love with her. On the other hand Benedict spends 3/4 of this book being entitled and rude and condescending, so the only explanation must indeed be, as Sophie posits, that she fell in love with him before she even met him. Really didn't like him, even after he finally apologized. Inconsiderate horrible man.
The Cinderella storyline with the cartoonishly evil stepmother really detracted from what was an interesting central conflict.

The titular offer from a gentleman is Benedict asking Sophie to be his mistress, since she is not of high enough class to be a suitable wife for a gentleman. Sophie says no because she doesn't want to risk bringing illegitimate children into the world.

What this arrangement or an 'unsuitable' marriage would mean socially went underexplored in favor of Cinderella-based melodrama, which I thought was kind of a shame.
Julia Quinn also did a good job at the beginning of the novel, when she wrote very nicely about

how much it hurts Sophie that Benedict doesn't recognise her anymore.

It was lovely angst! I was emotionally invested! Unfortunately she quickly discarded that in favour of the sickbed trope.
Out of the side characters only one had any significant development. The Bridgertons, especially Violet were all very nice and reasonably witty, though it seemed odd to me that no one had any objections to Sophie. Very modern sentiments from these period characters.
The sex scenes were unremarkable to bad. The audiobook narration probably didn't help.
The narrator did a nice voice for Sophie and other female characters but made all male characters including the ever so dashing Benedict sound like old men. Genuinely bad.

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