This guest review comes from Lisa! A longtime romance aficionado and frequent commenter to SBTB, Lisa is a queer Latine critic with a sharp tongue and lots of opinions. She frequently reviews at All About Romance and Women Write About Comics, where she’s on staff, and you can catch her at _@thatbouviergirl on Twitter. There, she shares good reviews, bracing industry opinions and thoughtful commentary when she’s not on her grind looking for the next good freelance job.
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Warning: this review contains spoilers for the entire Bridgerton series, as well as specific spoilers for the entirety of Bridgerton: Happily Ever After.
When you crack open a Bridgerton novel, you expect to see certain elements pressed between the pages. Headstrong heroines, pre-marital relations, misunderstandings, weddings that are anything but typical and kids aplenty. But Julia Quinn leans a little too hard on the latter element with Bridgertons: Happily Ever After. Only a few of the extra epilogues included in the book are worth your while unless you’re deeply invested in the ever-sprawling family’s shenanigans. Otherwise: no uterus is safe.
And I’m serious: whenever Quinn is looking for a touching ‘button’ to narratively push in this book, she just throws a new baby into the pile – a baby inevitably named after some Bridgerton relative or another. Nothing else exciting happens, just babies, more babies, more births and more babies.
This is less noticeable in a book that’s not all about post-married life for these couples, but in Happily Ever After you could set your watch to it and do a drinking game. The fecundity reaches a peak of pure ludicrous hilarity in Francesca’s story, where Francesca and Michael tenderly name their firstborn after John…and then end up having a daughter named Janet. Great baby shower gift idea for any Bridgerton: a baby name dictionary. Holidays must be incredibly confusing down at Bridgerton House.
The number of births offered up by the book is astounding. Menopause means nothing to the Bridgerton clan. Daphne has an oops baby, thinking she’s far beyond her childbearing years when another arrives. Her chapter has some of the most intriguing stuff in the book as a whole, with Belinda emerging as the most interesting figure among the third generation of Bridgerton grandchildren. A tender but hopelessly underbaked revelation about Penelope and Colin’s eldest son also arrives. Then Kate and Anthony have a fun, ribald and rivalrous Pal Mall game that also falls on the “good” side of the ladder.
At this point, baby rabies start to take over the book, overwhelming the narrative until it gets uncomfortable. This is a tome in which Colin tells Penelope his mother will forgive Penelope for being Lady Whistledown if they give her a grandchild (seriously, Violet – you need even more? Are you Lady Elon of Musk?).
Even a character like Francesca — whose infertility is a huge part of her character and whose chapter in this very book copes with her ambivalent feelings about having no biological kids – has not one miracle baby, but two. This is incredibly frustrating, as the way the book handles Francesca’s inner torment over her infertility is beautiful, as is how she comes to grips with just being an auntie in a happy marriage with Michael.
The baby mania peaks with a horrifying thud in Lucy and Gregory’s epilogue, where we witness her hemorrhage and nearly die after giving birth to twins – her eighth and ninth children! While Gregory’s fear and heartbreak in this chapter are touching, I still wanted to give him a vasectomy with a letter opener after reading through Lucy’s incredible pain. Good on the doctor for stepping in and telling them to knock it the fuck off after all of that.
A few more disappointing stories land before we reach a touching and generally well thought-out conclusion. To wit: Amanda Crane falls in love and has premarital sex but I could care less. And Hyacinth finally finds the diamonds she was obsessed with locating in her book – no thanks and yet thanks to her incredibly smug and annoying daughter, Isabella. Bonus points for actually doing something interesting with Hyacinth and Gareth here, instead of just having them pop out another kid.
For all of my carping, several outings save the book from being a D-lister. Besides the Kate and Anthony interlude, Poppy’s quest for love is adorable – though she, too, churns out four kids once a year until her uterus shrugs and gives up. Of course she has yet another “miracle” fifth baby as well, because even associates of the Bridgerton clan must sport a clown-car uterus as well. She names that one after the evil Aramantia as a gesture of goodwill. And calls her “Minty.” Because yes.
The main attraction here is Violet’s tale of finding true love with Edmund, and it is heartbreaking and sweet. But it, too, reveals the limitations of Quinn’s imagination when it comes to happiness for the characters. Make no bones about it: I loved Edmund and love that he was a virgin when he met Violet – a solid counterpart to his rake sons. We follow them from innocent children to happily married couple, and then the bee arrives.
God, poor Violet – with Edmund gone, she has settled back into the role of helpmeet. No second husband for her, and just one dance at a ball, though she entertains the possibility of more. The message is: if you find your true love you will breed until he dies, at which point you will never have a sex life again. After all, your eight kids will finally spit out thirty-three grandchildren and you’ll be too busy to think straight. Good Lord.
That’s one thing I’m thankful the Netflix version of this universe changed – I am glad Violet is the tea someone else will be drinking. As for Bridgerton: Happily Ever After, I’m sending it back. There are too many babies in this soup.
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Thanks!
“Lady Elon of Musk?”
Thanks for my first laugh of the day.
Yes, sometimes we just don’t need a baby epilogue. I felt very similarly about most of these stories, it was just a lot. also I couldn’t help but think of the nearly invisible nannies and maids that would be needed to support these enormous families, because it’s definitely not just the parents doing it (« involved » and loving though they might be).
@JoanneBB: Definitely, because they’re barely parenting themselves.
@Kris – you are so welcome!
As a childfree woman, I get really irked when “they have babies!” is the shorthand for HEA. People don’t need to have kids to live happily ever after! I guess this is why I gravitate pretty exclusively to queer romance now – if queer characters want kids, there’s usually a lot more involved to getting them than not having/using contraception or having it fail.
All these epilogue babies make me wonder about prolapsed organs, incontinence, near-to-death deliveries and other things I haven’t thought about. I love children, but why does no one mention the physical and mental cost to the women? Yes, yes, historical romance, fiction, big families are fun and so on. Also why so many men had multiple wives.
@Lisa, thanks and good lord, indeed.
@Kris
I’ll see your “Lady Elon of Musk” and raise you one “clown car uterus.”
Kudos, Lisa, on a perceptive and entertaining review. To be fair, Quinn is not the only culprit when it comes baby poppin’ epilogues, though she does lean into high volume production. I’m lookin’ at you, Jennifer Ashley (McKenzies) and SEP (Chicago Stars.).
Put this review in the Hall of Fame! Hilariously well written.
@Darlynne—this book so annoyed me when I read it 5 years that I totaled it all up: 8 Bridgerton children and 33 grandchildren, all of whom survive to adulthood and none of mothers die or suffer any adverse consequences. Really, the math just does not work for me. (But I guess fistulas and whooping cough are just not very romantic.)
Also, Violet’s epilogue just pissed me off—she deserved to find love again!
“Clown-car uterus” – I LOL’d!
Did a quick dive into infant mortality in early 1800’s. Did not realize quite how dour it was. In ‘elite families’ 180 per 1000 births up to 300 per 1000 births in all comers. So with 33 Brigderton grandkids, at least 6 should have died before the age of 5.
And maternal mortality was upwards of 1 in 100, which interestingly close to Afghanistan’s current rate.
Not to be a downer! I am a women’s global health nerd!
@Darlynne, @PamG, @Karin – Thank you! To be fair, in the Lucy chapter JQ does address what birthing so many kids can do, but it comes too late in the narrative and is belied by the thirty-three grandkids being extent.
@TheOtherKate- Oh my gosh, I’ve always strove to write the best I can, and I’ve always loved reading here, thank you!
@FashionablyEvil: I hate that Violet never found love again! HATE IT.
Great review! That kind of let’s have more babies and more babies just for the sake of it-HEA annoys me too. I admit I’m not a big fan of JQ, I have not yet read one book of hers that did not make me mad in some way (but I will admit she’s great at writing banter, and that drew me in a few times). I read some of the Bridgerton novels years ago, and I did look at buying this book at one time because of the Daphne and Simon epilogue, but back then even the e-version was way too expensive for a collection of epilogues IMHO, so I didn’t buy it. I see the price has come down, but I won’t be buying it no either.
Oh thank God – or, more accurately, Lisa (and the commenters). I’ve never understood the popularity of Quinn’s books, which I found pedestrian and obvious (and overbabied). I think what attracts me about Bridgerton is due to Shonda Rhimes. Quinn wrote the tie-in novel for Queen Charlotte, which I enjoyed hugely on the screen, and left out almost everything I had liked best: namely, the interactions of the older Charlotte, Agatha and Violet.