A review by bookedinsideout
When He Was Wicked by Julia Quinn

4.0

I’ve both loved liked and hated my journey of reading these books. Liked because after finishing the second season of Bridgerton, I just wanted to watch the next, and since that wasn’t possible, I’ve enjoyed spending my evenings keeping up with the Bridgertons in print. Hated because there are some things I just have to try to ignore, and some so misogynistic and egregious that I can’t.

For example, after an attempted sexual assault, a man “squeaks” after having his head slammed into a tree. “Rather like a girl, Francesca thought dispassionately. She’d known he wouldn’t make a good husband, but that clinched it.” Yes, taking advantage of a woman isn’t great, but forget about his desirability altogether if he’s going to “squeak like a girl.” In this same scene, it’s lightly suggested that it wouldn’t have happened in Francesca didn’t go alone with him into the garden in the first place. Good grief.

But I was glad that they addressed one of my lighter concerns: that these heroes hardly ever ask for their heroine’s hand in marriage — they either assume after they’ve essentially “ruined” her or tell her that’s what’s happening.
“’You never did answer my question last night.’
She didn’t turn. ‘What question was that?’
‘I believe I asked you to marry me.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ she replied, her voice quite calm, ‘you informed me that you believed we should be married and then proceeded to explain why.’”

So it still wasn’t a perfect romance for me, but it was still by far my favourite book yet.

A love story for someone who’s lost their partner can be great if it’s done right, but often it saddens me to see the current partner being compared to the one who’s died, and of course the current one has to be better and we have to point out the previous partner’s flaws and how this one makes up for them. I was pretty impressed because really neither man was pitted against the other. Both Francisca and Michael mourned John, and it was never about one man taking the other’s place or having to be the same kind of partner or a better one. It was a story of grief and guilt and she didn’t come to a conclusion easily, but she was able to love them both at the same time and not put either of them down.

In the vein of being able to hold two things as special at the same time without weighing them, one thing I did like from Eloise’s book was both her and her family’s (especially Violet’s) whole-hearted acceptance of Eloise’s new step-children as her children. They immediately became part of the family and that was that. In the epilogue where there is talk of children and whether they are biological or not, Eloise says:

“Before I had Penelope, and even when I was carrying her, I thought it would be different. It is different. But it’s not less. It’s not a question of levels or amounts, or even…really…the nature of it… I can’t explain it.”

I usually cringe at
baby epilogues because (1) even in a romance I don’t think the HEA always has to be marriage and also babies, and (2) when there is infertility and then a miracle epilogue baby it feels insensitive at the very least, as if true love will fix everything. So while I can’t speak to the pain of infertility, I did at least appreciate in this one that, first of all, while there was talk of infertility throughout the book, there was no further mention of a pregnancy in the “proper book.” And then in the second epilogue there was, but we got to see the real pain of witnessing people get to have their own dreams realized and still not get that yourself after 3 years of trying. Yes, it does end up happening, but it still wasn’t without its challenges. I was expecting an adoption storyline too though and I wish that had been a part of it.


Though the Bridgertons are mostly always one big happy family, I have appreciated seeing how a big family (probably any family) can sometimes make you feel lonely in your differences. Eloise, a proud spinster, suddenly feeling alone and a little insecure after all her siblings are marrying off and then her best friend, her partner in spinsterhood, does too. And Francisca feeling separated from her family by distance, by her isolating grief, and then both happy and sad at the same time watching them so easily conceive.

After feeling fed up with the men of Bridgerton in the last book, Michael Stirling was not perfect, but a welcome surprise. He gives massages, he’s not threatened by a woman taking charge, and he’s not opposed to period sex.
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