On The Way to the Wedding is the eighth and final book in Quinn’s hugely popular Bridegerton series, about a popular and respected Regency England family of eight close knit siblings and their loving mother. On the Way to the Wedding was named Best Long Historical Romance of 2006 in the Romance Writers of America‘s annual RITA Awards.
This is the sixth book I have read by this author. I listened to this on on audio, read by Simon Prebble, who also narrates Jo Beverly and Stephanie Laurens audiobooks. He is very good.
On The Way to The Wedding begins when our hero Gregory, the lone unmarried Bridgerton, is running to stop a wedding. He bursts into the chapel, and declares his love to the bride. She turns to him and asks him beseechingly why he is doing this … and then the story begins. It was a thrilling, gripping opening, and nicely conveys Gregory’s exuberant, emotional and impulsive personality.
We next move to a country house party hosted by eldest brother Anthony and his wife Kate, the hero and heroine of my favorite Bridgerton book, The Viscount Who Loved Me. Simon Gregory, the rather aimless youngest son, believes in true love after witnessing so much of it in his own family, and is sure that love will one day strike him like a thunderbolt. And it does:
Gregory looked around, both for the refreshments and for someone he knew, most preferably his sister-in-law Kate, who propriety dictated he greet first. But as his eyes swept across the scene, instead he saw…
Her.
Her.
And he knew it. He knew that she was the one. He stood frozen, transfixed. The air didn’t rush from his body; rather, it seemed to slowly escape until there was nothing left, and he just stood there, hollow, and aching for more.
He couldn’t see her face, not even her profile. There was just her back, just the breathtakingly perfect curve of her neck, one lock of blonde hair swirling against her shoulder.
And all he could think was– I am wrecked.
For all other women, he was wrecked. This intensity, this fire, this overwhelming sense of rightness–he had never felt anything like it.
The woman is the beautiful Hermione Watson, one of those women who has men falling all over her at every turn. Standing next to Hermione, unnoticed, is her best friend Lucinda — Lucy — Abernathy. Lucy is practical, fastidious, and likes to solve other people’s problems. Gregory and Lucy develop a friendship, as they conspire to get Hermione to return Gregory’s affections, a state of affairs far preferable, Lucy thinks, to the present one, in which Hermione is infatuated with her father’s secretary.
Lucy is engaged to Mr. Haselby, an arrangement made years ago by her uncle. Haselby is nice enough, and Lucy accepts the engagement without complaint. Her practical nature is not much for true love, anyway.
I was delighted with this part of the novel, the developing bond between Gregory and Lucy, and Gregory’s ego bruisings at the hands of a women who doesn’t know he exists, even when he turns on every ounce of Bridgerton charm at his disposal. The growing friendship between Gregory and Lucy was compelling, and the declaration and consummation of their love (later) was very romantic.
Eventually, the action moves to London as Lucy prepares for her wedding, and the book gets darker as the motives behind her uncle’s arrangement with Haselby’s father become clearer. Gregory has a reputation for having things handed to him on a silver platter, and for deciding he doesn’t want things that don’t come easy. It is clear Quinn is going to make him work hard for his HEA so he can grow as a man worthy of true love. I think some readers dislike Lucy for her weakness, and it is true she is a classic passive Regency heroine, but I did appreciate the realistic fear she had of breaking society’s rules. The events at the end include bribery, kidnapping, and a gun fight. I wasn’t convinced by how the problems were resolved, but rest assured, Gregory and Hermione get their HEA.
At a few points, things happened in a way that was unbelievably convenient. For example, Hermione’s romantic resolution, and the ending of the engagement of Lucy to Mr. Haselby. As to the latter, Cheryl Sneed, in her C+ AAR review, noted disapprovingly that it is “dependent upon a huge historical inaccuracy.” I think I can guess what that is, but if anyone wants to enlighten me in the comments, I would be very grateful.
I really like this kind of set up — with the hero believing he has found love with one woman and belatedly realizing his true love is someone else — but I was disappointed in the way Gregory realized he was in love with Lucy. He spied the back of her neck from across the room. Yes, the exact same way he fell for Hermione. But Gregory’s love for Lucy is supposed to be the real thing, not the mere infatuation he felt for her friend. Maybe Quinn wanted to replace the image in the reader’s mind of the impact of Hermione’s neck on Gregory, but I felt it was unnecessary.
Audio helps highlight Quinn’s strengths — the dialogue, often witty, and the overall light, fun feel. I also think some of Quinn’s signature elements — the very. short. sentences. — are less noticeable on audio. Although not completely gone. Once Gregory figures out he is in love with Lucy, he gets a weird kind of speech disorder where he has to say “I love you” over and over, often at inappropriate moments. As I listened, I kept having a mental image of an exasperated Lucy trying to have a conversation with him about something more mundane, like hiring a governess, and having Gregory reply with “but. I. love. you.” to her every question.
There is also the epilogue, in which Lucy has 9 healthy children. Via a mere 8 pregnancies (the last are twins). Ok, this is Julia Quinn romance, and you have to expect this sort of thing. But does Lucy have to smile and knit through them all?
So, as is typical with me and this author, the reading experience was a mix of the enjoyable and the exasperating. Overall though, thanks in large part to the likeability of the hero, this one was enjoyable.
*********SPOILER COMMENT BELOW********
My next and final comment is spoilery:
It turns out that Lucy’s intended is gay. In the end, Haselby actually helps Lucy and Gregory get together, and his motives for this were not clear to me, since he had to have a wife and heir regardless of his sexual orientation. I would have loved more from this character’s point of view. Can anyone recommend a Regency era gay romance?
Julia Templeton has a new series out about 3 rakish brothers. The secondary Lesbian storyline deals with a very sexually active Lady and her attraction to the sister of the heroine of the first book. The sister is very confused about her feelings for this women. They actually act on their desire for one another and I would love to see a full length novel with those two characters.
Nice review, Jessica! It’s always interesting to see an appraisal of a book that’s heard rather than read. I really liked a couple of Quinn’s books, but the modern-in-regency-clothing characters eventually did me in despite her many strengths as a writer.
Here’s a link to the AAR discussion that followed the review: http://www.likesbooks.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=3580&view=previous&sid=0a7792c2c431c3e069c29964800df25c
Also, you have Simon as the aimless youngest son, but of course he’s the eldest (or he wouldn’t be the Viscount Who Loved Her). Or maybe you meant someone else?
@katiebabs: oh, thank you for that rec!
@Sunita: thanks for the correction — that was a big mistake! And I will check out the AAR discussion forthwith.
I consider myself a pretty strong JQ fan, but this is the only book of hers that I couldn’t bring myself to finish. Gregory’s obsession with Hermione put me off from the start and I lost interest. When I subsequently saw the discussions about the historical inaccuracy I was less inclined to pick it back up. Why some books win the RITA is a mystery, and in this category in 2007 I thought Pamela Clare’s Surrender was ever so much better. I still have OTWTTW and maybe one day I’ll try again.
A good audiobook reader can make me tolerate a lot of silliness that would bother me on the printed page (and a bad one can spoil a book I might otherwise enjoy). I can’t really stand Stephanie Laurens, but, given my library’s limited audio selection, I have enjoyed a couple of hers read by Simon Prebble. I like the relish with which he renders the ridiculously purple sex scenes. Makes me laugh (although rather embarrassing to arrive at work or run into a friend at the dog park with that pouring through my headphones).
Ava March writes erotic m/m Regency romances. I haven’t read them–not sure whether I read a review somewhere, or why that stuck in my head.
@Phyl: I can see that. I happen to kind of like that storyline, but it is very hard to do. For example, in this book, Gregory and Lucy share a passionate kiss in the library in the midst of his courtship of Hermione. Why doesn’t he accept what any normal person would: that the kiss means he is attracted to Lucy? He just can’t, or the book would be over.
@Liz: Oh I am so glad you said that about Simon Prebble! So true! He gets louder and louder and by the end he reaches these incredible crescendos. I wish I knew how to share an audio snippet.
I bet @sarahfrantz would have some good suggestions about Regency m/m f/f stories … I can think of same-sex subplots (Carlyle, Balogh, just to name a few) but not stories where they are the primary couple. I do remember (of course, not the important information like title/author) a Regency m/m + wife = threesome going into future book that was highly praised and that I did not particularly care for. I just felt the wife was always going to be shortchanged: that the most intimate partnership was the two men. I’ll try to think of the title!
@Phyl, I think you and I share a similar taste in books and authors and much to my amazement, I could not finish this JQ. Way to the Wedding just never held my interest. It was the first time I ever broke up a series … I keep the first 6 of the Bridgerton Family but not last two. So, a guy who starts with one girl and ends up with another – - I know there are some serious SEP fans out there and that’s the plot of her upcoming book. Oh, forgot, the gals are BFFs. I think. For me that will be a hard sell altho I’m re-reading Never Romance A Rake (thanks Jess for getting on that path again!) and Gareth and Zee were more than one time lovers and both married different people. What I liked about Carlyle’s portrayal is that she did not minimize the difficulty of the transistion.
@Jessica:
“He gets louder and louder and by the end he reaches these incredible crescendos” . . . . As the actress said to the bishop. I have to believe his tongue is firmly in his cheek.
I listened to a Botswana-set mystery he did and he was great with the accents (different African, Scottish–don’t know if they were all authentic, but they were differentiated nicely).
While I’m afraid I don’t know any straight up (heh) m/m Regencies, Samantha Kane writes m/m/f. They’re called the Brothers in Arms series. Some have been better than others for me, but at the moment I can’t remember which was which.
I didn’t like this one either. In fact, I have not liked the last however many JQ books. They just didn’t work for me.
I hate the portrayal of gay characters in romances for 3 reasons.
1. The Catalyst/Helper/Re-decorator–To quote the last part of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience:
“In that case unprecedented,
Single I must live and die –
I shall have to be contented
With a tulip or lily!
(Takes a lily from button-hole and gazes affectionately at it.)
ALL. He will have to be contented
With a tulip or lily!
In that case unprecedented (etc.)
Greatly pleased with one another,
To get married we/they decide.
Each of us/them will wed the other,
Nobody be Bunthorne’s Bride!”
Doesn’t that pretty much summarize the gay characters in romance and chick lit? I’m so sick of it. The perpetually single make-over king who rescues the heroine, Panders and is generally like a fairy godmother . . . .fairy? Hhhmm. Anyway, it’s been done to death and it’s boring. I suppose I should be at least grateful the gay villain is no longer roaming the pages.
2. M/M/F–I agree with Janet! The wife always does seem to get shortchanged. I don’t know why people find this appealing. It seems to fly entirely in the face of oh, I don’t know, actual human behavior. I realize this a fantasy but it is one I don’t get: like foot fetishes and people who want to dress up as clowns and have sex. Moreover, I feel like even straight men will choose other men over a woman so a relationship like that just makes me think it is not going to work. Of course, I feel like that about most threesomes. It doesn’t seem like a good, workable situation. I have more to say about this but I haven’t worked it completely out yet so I won’t say anymore.
3. The failure to understand the history of homosexuality–This bothers me even more than normal, lately. As Jessica pointed out, Haselby would still need to marry and father an heir. This idea that sexual identity is the end all and be all of a person’s sense of self is both absurd and anachronistic. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: people are complicated and the history of homosexuality is complex. People did not think about sexuality as an identity in the Regency era. I know that’s nitpicky but it bothers me because it allows for caricature and cliche rather actual characterization.
I would suggest the following reading: http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/patience/wilde/wilde.html
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a727895234~db=all~jumptype=rss
I recently read Quinn’s latest, “10 Things I Love About You.” It was not a keeper for me. I have read all of her books but only 2 have been keepers (of which one is a actually a short story.)
I have been pondering this for awhile: what is it about her voice that I do not love? I persist with reading her books hoping that I will have another auto-buy and auto-keep author to depend on. It hasn’t happened and I am ready to give up.
I read a multitude of funny romances (historical and contemps) that have wit and charm like Quinn’s books but they also have that emotional depth that resonates with me that makes it memorable and thus a keeper. Why can’t her books be the same way for me?
@lazaraspaste
“Catalyst, helper, re-decorator” … ok, so I’m guessing you don’t care for the portrayal of George Kemble in Carlyle’s books? But he’s so much more … he’s vicious (if need be), he has great underworld connections, he’s genuinely witty and generally badder than bad … and by that I mean whatever the lords and ladies he’s helping out get into, he’s always a “been there, done that” kinda gay character. Of course, why can’t he have a book? Huh?
@Janet W: LOL, Janet W, our taste does intersect frequently. I love that! And you raise a good point about Carlyle. She seems to like dealing with the hard stuff–and in that vein, I too would like to see Kemble have his own book.
The things I liked best about this book were the side characters, and I hated the epilogue. Even in a fictional world where everyone is rich, I can’t imagine anyone having 9 children, being able to support them, and being placidly happy about it without divine intervention. Eton has never been cheap.
http://www.annherendeen.com/phyllida_and_the_brotherhood_of_philander_65254.htm … thought and thought and came up with title: Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander. Just didn’t buy into happy 3-way ending, especially as I recall the way the two men reacted to her pregnancy. Thought there was more than a frisson of brood mare: I mean she was cared for but well, I just can’t exactly put my finger on why it didn’t shout HEA for me.
Nothing of value to add only that I’ve never read Julia Quinn. I don’t really do light and fluff. Give me dark and tortured and I’m there. Maybe. Glad to see your site is back up and running.
@Janet W. — I haven’t read enough of Carlyle to comment on that character. I’m not technically against those characteristics, I just think that they are employed as a way of making the character gay in a cliche and convenient while not really thinking about what it means to be gay or to be historical accurate to have predominantly homosexual desire. I feel this way about gay characters in contemporary books as well.
On the broodmare issue.
Here’s the problem I have with m/m romance, m/m/f romance, and m/f/m romance–and please bear in mind that although I have thought about this A LOT, I haven’t ever articulated it to my satisfaction so . . . bear with me. And apologies to Jessica for, well, everything that follows
-deep breath-
Sexually, I have no problem with any of these pairings and politically and ideologically I think it is important to portray working love relationships between gay men as in m/m romances.
BUT women and women’s bodies so easily disappear in these stories. They just become ciphers, vessels for the expression of male sexuality. Broodmares, as Janet put it.
And this is not to say that this problem–the problem of the disappearing female body and voice is not present in traditional m/f romances. Because it is. It is very much there. It is simply easier to see, I think it these other pairings. And its presence in m/f romances is one of the reasons I have HUGE, massive, hero’s wang-sized problems with “beautiful” heroines and ingenue heroines or TSTL heroines. To me they are just ciphers for the expression of the male character, conduits for the growth and salvation of the man. I hate that.
One of the reasons I’m attracted to romance is because it has the potential (if not the actual) to express female heterosexual desire positively. To put the woman and her body and her voice in the desiring subject position.
When people talk about how they like these other couplings, I understand it intellectually. But emotionally, it makes me livid. Yes, it is personal. How could it not be? I don’t want me or any other woman to have to disappear into the male body in order to express her sexuality. It makes my left eye twitch with rage. I don’t want a heroine who is me but I do want a heroine who is not a cipher, a beard, a placeholder. She doesn’t have to be good, she doesn’t have to be kind, she doesn’t have to be true. I don’t want her to be second to the hero or the heroes. I want a heroine whose body doesn’t disappear into biological imperative.
I want a heroine in the freaking subject position who gets a HEA. This is my dream. When I see a m/m/f romance all I can think is that there is no way that woman will ever get between those two men. Because they twin one another and she is always going to be totally Other.
@Angela/Lazaraspaste: Marry me.
I really enjoyed OtWttW. Historical inaccuracies don’t automatically ruin a book for me, and I’m just a sucker for a hero with a sunny outlook, a guy who has no doubt of his capacity for love or his worthiness to be loved. Give me that kind of hero, plus the novelty of the quasi-cinematic way this book opens, and I will cut you a lot of slack along the way.
@Angela/Lazaraspaste
I want to kiss your hand in gratitude and thanks.
@Angela/Lazaraspaste: This is so interesting. Does it matter to you, then, who is writing and reading these stories? That is, are you partly thinking of (some) straight female readers/writers who say one thing they like about m/m romance is that issues of gender inequality (i.e. women and their bodies) are set aside and you can just focus on romance? I’d feel differently about erasure of the woman’s body in gay romance written by and aimed at gay men, I think.
I have not read a lot of m/m/f fiction, but it seems to me that in what I have read, the woman often physically “gets between” the two men, but as a way for them to express/sublimate their desire for each other. That’s quite explicit in the first of Samantha Kane’s Brothers in Arms series, which someone referenced above (the heroes’ mutual love and desire for the heroine enables them to recognize and express their love and desire for each other–so she’s “central” in a way, but also gets “moved aside” as they are able to have sex directly with each other, not just “through” her). Also in that one, the heroine is legally married to the hero with title, who will need an heir, so at least that historical reality is directly addressed.
Your comments made me think about how sexually passive heroines in heterosexual romances often seem. Of course there’s a fantasy element to lying back and being pleasured, but it’s also often about the man’s power over her body and his skill. She doesn’t get to be an active agent of desire. (I just finished a contemporary I quite liked, but on the morning after the hero thinks, “she’s the best lover I’ve ever had,” and I’m thinking “Dude, she just lay there while you worked her over. What’s so great about that?” I guess her screams of pleasure were the sign of her excellence at surrendering to him.)
I’d like to hear about titles you think do give the heroine subjectivity (though I realize we’re wandering well away from Jessica’s review).
@Angela/Lazaraspaste:
I have not thought that deeply or eloquently–I’ve only ever articulated my feelings toward all these pairs as “I need a girl in there somewhere, a girl who matters.”
Because so often, in pop culture, the girl doesn’t matter. I tried to articulate that opinion one time in a discussion with my husband, and he’s rather surprised that I think there are no women in movies. To his view, there are plenty of women in movies.
Maybe they are there in number, but not in quality. Which is why I was so resolutely thrilled about Mr. and Mrs. Smith, with the woman a rare full equal of the man, a woman who is not defined by just her relationship with the hero of the story, but a unique individual who is madly loved by the hero for precisely those reasons.
She is not an adjunct to the hero’s journey. She is not the interchangeable, indistinguishable wife/girlfriend that we see so often. She IS the story.
Halleluia.
@Maili–Yes, a thousand times yes! But our bridesmaids have wear teal dresses with puffed sleeves and ruffles. Lots and lots of ruffles.
@Danielle–Thank you.
@Liz–I do feel differently about gay romance written for gay men. One of my favorite books is “Freak Show” by James St. James. It’s funny, like laugh out loud funny, and sweet. I wish there was more m/m romance that were more like that book, where it was the about the characters falling in love rather than sex. There are good ones out there! I know that.
As for heroines in the subjective position, I’ll have to think about that.
@Sherry Thomas–Exactly! There are women all over the place but they are just bodies. It’s like Jerry Seinfeld’s riff about the groom & groomsmen. If the groom doesn’t show up, everyone just moves up the line. Women in popular culture are totally replaceable. I haven’t thought about Mr. and Mrs. Smith like that, but you are right. I also think it is one of the strange things about many romantic comedies from the 1940′s and 30′s. The women in those films are actually more unique, independent and interesting that women in modern films. It’s very strange.
We are so off-topic now.
Actually let me amend my comment to Liz.
It’s not so much the audience that matters, vis a vis gay romance for gay men being better or something like that. It’s more I have a problem with m/m romance that seems to support cliches and erroneous views of male homosexuality in order to titillate the readers.
I also find it curious that in romance gay male characters are so acceptable but you get even fewer positive depictions of lesbians. It troubles me that homosexuality only means men and not women. That’s really too bad.
@Angela/Lazaraspaste:
“I also find it curious that in romance gay male characters are so acceptable but you get even fewer positive depictions of lesbians. It troubles me that homosexuality only means men and not women.”
Yes, we haven’t come far from Queen Victoria, have we? Perhaps the heroine’s lesbian best friend could seem like a rival to the hero and/or threat to a heroine’s straightness (given that women’s sexuality is often more malleable than men’s– I’m thinking of the movie “Kissing Jessica Stein” as a pop culture example). Whereas the gay best friend just confirms the hero’s desireability. I know I’ve read and liked one where the hero had a lesbian best buddy, but darned if I can remember what it was.
There is a KA Mitchell novella ‘An Improper Holiday’ set in a regency country house which has two love stories. The primary one is m/m and the secondary f/f. The resolution of both HEA acknowledges the social proprieties of the times.
Two fun m/m reads are JL Langley’s ‘Regelence’ books – ‘My Fair Captain’ and ‘The Englor Affair’. Two novels set on two different planets that live the regency lifestyle. So you have space ships, AIs and vat grown babies to answer the heir problem, along with cravets and propiety and valets and arranged marriages. Some of the writing is a bit wonky and in the EA book the forgiveness is a bit rushed at the end but I am looking forward to more regelence stories.
Really interesting discussion – especially Angela’s comments. I have been thinking about why I read a lot of m/m and not f/f (well, there is more of the former published). I think it ties in with what Liz was saying about equality and not having to deal with gender issues or cypher heroines in the story. even in a story where one man is clearly more dominant than the other they still seem more equal. What does that say about our society!
I also wonder if the menage books that have brothers sharing a wife are an attempt to get around the issue of the woman being secondary to the two men in the relationship? Because the men are not love objects to each other? Yet when I read a menage book I want everyone to be in a love relationship with all the others in the story and it is not a HEA for me if there isn’t a balance of love between equals. In fact Red Garnier’s book ‘The Red Sash’ doesn’t work for me because of the very issues Angela describes.
I’ve found more m/m pairings in Fantasy than in genre Romance. If you’re interested in a m/m pairing, Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint is set in an alternate Regency inspired setting.
This is terribly late but I just want to say how very much I appreciated Angela’s comments and how she seemed to voice exactly what I feel when I read m/m or read about it on romance blogs*. I really feel like internalized misogyny, the discounting of women as interesting, worthy romance protagonists, is the elephant in the room when it comes to discussing m/m (or slash, as I know it from my old Star Trek fandom days). Thank you so much, Angela, for bringing it up and for voicing your unease with the disappearing of female bodies and female lives (and the disappearing of lesbianism too!)
* Note that I do NOT feel this way when I read actual gay male literature (and I read a lot of that just as I read a lot of lesbian literature). Gay men are writing their lives and their lives very often include women in crucial roles (as mothers, sisters, wives, lovers, colleagues and friends). When I read m/m most of the time it seems to evoke some feminist dystopia/misogynist utopia where all women have disappeared or only appear in marginal roles as janitors, breeders and cheerleaders. Maybe it’s my late 70s sci-fi influenced Tiptree/Russ-mediated feminist take, but as a kinky queer woman in my early 40s I find this incredibly sad and deeply disheartening.