Customer Reviews

To Sir Phillip, With Love

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(33)
3 star:		(27)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Hmmm, I am surprised by some of the negative reviews. I found the characters very human and likeable. My views were not based on knowing Eloise from other Bridgerton books since I have only read one other (Colin's story). That may be why I liked Eloise better than some reviewers.

Sir Phillip was a man who ran away from his problems by burying himself in botany experiments. He had learned to cope with a severely depressed wife and seemingly untamable children by retreating into himself and his greenhouse. Phillip had no foundation of good parental behavior. He thought himself a bad father but didn't try to change. He felt the best way to handle the situation after his wife's death was to find the best mother. Maybe not ok by today's standards but it needs to be examined under the early 1800's standards where his thinking and reactions were quite normal.

Eloise felt restless. Her friends were marrying and she had no prospects that interested her. A quick note to the widowed husband of her cousin led to a year of letters and an unusual proposal of marriage. The letters in the beginning of each chapter gave me a wonderful portrait of her soul. I loved that touch! I wish we had been privy to more of the letters between Phillip and Eloise - more people might have found Phillip likeable. Eloise hastily runs off to meet this "perfect" man and finds that not only is he not perfect, there are a few things he neglected to tell her - especially the 8 year old (boy and girl) twins! But he is passionate and seduced by his kisses she begins to decide they will suit each other.

Then the Bridgerton brothers converge on the scene after a week. There are funny situations with the brothers that made me laugh out loud. They also insist on a hasty wedding and Eloise and Phillip do not begin marriage on a good footing. Trouble with the children gets worse, Phillip retreats into himself and Eloise tries to fix everything in her dominating way. Can it work out in the end or are they doomed to passion but not love? (They do get along fine in the bedroom and I loved the sensuality of this novel).

I enjoyed every aspect of this novel. The characters including the children and even the horrible nurse all add a dimension of reality. These are not cookie-cutter perfect people that you may find in other novels. There were real problems to be resolved and I was sorry to see the book come to an end.

I was absolutely delighted with this latest book by Julia Quinn. I thought that her writing style was very similiar to those of her earlier books and the plot idea was also reminiscent of those in originality. My local bookstore called me yesterday and said it was in and unfortunately, it was finished by midnight last night! Now I have to wait until August to read a new Julia Quinn!

Plus - for all of you who love the Bridgerton Brothers - there is an absolutely wonderful scene with all four of them that I laughed out loud while reading!

This was a great book that is more than worth the cover price! Thanks a bunch, Julia!

Miss Eloise Bridgerton at eight and twenty - she wasn't looking for someone perfect - just perfect for her! She didn't think herself beautiful, attractive but she was a Bridgerton after all, but most people liked her because she was nice. She was a wonderful correspondent and spent hours writing letters, birthday greetings, get well notes, etc. On the occasion of hearing of her cousins death she sent along a condolence letter to the bereaved husband, Sir Phillip Crane who in response to that note not only replied with a thank you but sent her a pressed flower in remembrance, and, so began a year long `secret' pen pal correspondence.

Sir Phillip, was a quiet man, a botanist - who while not happy - seemed to find some comfort in his work in his greenhouse. He had two children that he needed to find a mother for and knowing that Eloise Bridgerton was a spinster and more than likely homely and unassuming he would send a note along inquiring that they meet to see if they might not `suit'. However, he was in no way prepared to find a beautiful young woman, unescorted, in the early morning standing on his doorstep - a woman with cool gray eyes he could have drowned in! As Eloise charged through the next couple of days, she found that Sir Phillip wasn't exactly perfect - he needed a lot of work - but there was something about him that she would find was perfect for her!

What Julia Quinn has done, my dear reader, is to draw you in with her exquisite characterizations of this remarkable family so that you cannot help yourself but smile. From the moment you pick up the book to the very end you will find yourself on an emotional roller coaster of feelings as if you were living the story rather than a casual observer. I have followed the Bridgerton family chronicles since the very beginning with THE DUKE AND I, and each individual book has been placed on my keeper shelf where this one is sure to follow along with anything else this extremely gifted and talented author deems to write. While you could pick up any of the series as stand alone books, for pure enjoyment - buy them all and enjoy the Bridgerton loving family experience!

Let me start off by saying that the only reason I am even giving "To Sir Phillip. . ." 3 stars is because I love Julia Quinn and, as bored as I was with this book, I still like her writing style.

Synopsis: Spinster Eloise Bridgerton, sibling number 5, decides to act on a whim and travel hours away to Romney Hall to meet the pen pal she has been corresponding with for numerous months. Her "pen pal" is, Sir Phillip Crane, the widowed husband of Eloise's distant cousin and the father of rambuctious twins. Somehow through the correspondence of letters, Phillip decides that Eloise would be the perfect wife/mother combination. She is a spinster, and he assumes, an unattractive one at that, on whom he can hoist his child raising and house managing duties. Then he can go back to his greenhouse where he concocts mutant vegetables and potions for better living.

Life is going well when, not surprisingly (and not as wittingly as it used to be), the Bridgerton brothers come barging into Romney Hall and DEMAND that Sir Phillip marry their spinster sister. Phillip and Eloise pretend to be indignant (how is that, when that is the reason she went to him in the first place --- to explore the possibility of marriage?) but of course, march to the altar anyway.

Where to begin? I bought this book the day it hit the shelves and I'm still not done with it! I bring this book with me everywhere I go in the hopes that in all my free time, I will just sit and read it --- and finish it! Every time I pick it up, I get so easily distracted. With "The Duke and I" and "The Viscount Who Loved Me" and not to mention, "Romancing Mr. Bridgerton," I devoured them! The house could have been on fire and I would not have known, yet alone cared!

With this book, I am frequently eyeing the book of matches...

But seriously, I had a problem with the hero of the story. He was supposed to be a more intellectual hero, a more subdued but more vulnerable man. Instead, he came across as a horny husband and a bumbling father who doesn't have the instinct to be a family man.

Okay, so that's Phillip.

I was more keen on Eloise. She was just how she was in the other books: witty and smart. But I was disappointed that Quinn did not include a dialogue between Eloise and Penelope, her supposed best friend. Eloise cited Penelope's marriage to her brother Colin to be a significant factor in her decision to slip away in the middle of the night to meet and possibly marry Phillip. She explains that she expected Penelope to grow old with her. I would think that there would be a special moment between them. Overall, I thought that the Bridgerton family's presence was too brief. In the other books of the series, it felt like the Bridgerton family was always courting the hero/heroine, whichever the case may be. But in "To Sir Phillip...," Eloise was on her own, really. Not even Hyacinth made an appearance.

There was a lot missing with this book. I am beginning to ask the dreaded questions such as, "Is Julia Quinn getting tired of writing about the Bridgertons? Because there are a few more stories we'd like to see." or even, "Did the publishers and the fans rush her on this book, thereby compromising the quality?"

Regardless of this unfortunate experience, I am still looking forward to Julia Quinn's next books. Rumor is that she will write about Francesca next. I hope Gregory and Hyacinth are in the works as well!

I'm not sure why, but this last installment of Quinn's Bridergton series left me with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. I've waited for this book for a year, read the rest of the series over again in preparation, and then finished this book in one afternoon... feeling as if I'd read a short-story that didn't live up to the standards of the rest of her books.
Julia Quinn is something of a hero to me because she manages to liven-up a genere of romance (regency) that is so often over-written and under-developed. Her characters are wonderful, not only because they fall in love so beautifully, but because they interact with their families, they have issues they need to resolve (Simon's fear of being a father, Anthony's fear of death, Colin's fear of a wasted life, etc.) and the love they find helps them grow and accomplish that. They also make the reader laugh, and seem so real that you have to love them.

But Phillip and Eloise seem to sail through their story, never quite getting into the real issues facing their relationship. It happens too quickly, and their distance from the rest of the Bridgerton clan takes away some of the charm of the tale (most especially the absence of Penelope, Eloise's best friend and Colin's wife, who on the day of Eloise's dissapearance revealed a great secret that Eloise never learns and really should).

All in all, by the standards of the genre, it is a fun, easy and engaging story that will make you want to read all the other Bridgerton books. But by Quinn's standards, well, I'm just waiting for the next one.

I was thrilled when I spotted her new book on the bookshelf, but I was less then thrilled when I began to read it. The very first part of the book was alright, but then it fell into a slump until her brother Anthony came into the picture. However, once he left, it was an incredibly boring read. I was disappointed in this latest Bridgerton book, especially after reading Romancing Mr. Bridgerton, Colin's story. This is actually the first book by Julia Quinn that I did not enjoy. She's a wonderfully humorous, witty writer but she failed there too with this book. I thought Phillip was too involved in his own pity party to really like him. And Eloise was just a bit too perfect, a bit too controlling. I didn't care at all for their first real love scene when they consummated their marriage. It was over in a couple paragraphs and I could have done without the references as to how he took care of himself all those years. But Quinn is a wonderful author. I just hope she's not losing her magic.

Eloise Bridgerton and Sir Philip Crane have been corresponding for over a year. Sir Philip asks Eloise to come for a visit to see if they will suit each other enough to marry. Eloise agrees to this but does not tell her family, nor does she write Sir Philip to say when she will be arriving. Thus the first encounter is less than encouraging. He is expecting a homely spinster, which Eloise certainly is not. She is expecting someone much more charming and affable.

Eloise is a great heroine. She has an irrepressible spirit and speaks her mind frequently. Sir Philip is less likable as a hero, but Quinn does a great job of explaining why Philip acts inappropriately. Since much of the story is from Philip's point of view, instead of seeing him as a jerk, the reader will feel compassion for this awkward and somewhat shy man. I truly loved Philip, he was uncertain and insecure, and easily made happy. I just didn't know why Eloise would love him.

While this is certainly a love story, the main focus is the relationship between Philip and his children. Philip is a distant father because of his fear of becoming like his own father. His awkwardness with his children is heartbreaking, frustrating, and endearing at the same time. However, due to the focus with Philip coming to terms with dealing with his own childhood, as well as dealing with the death of his wife, this story is sweet and amusing, but not hysterically funny, as the rest of the Bridgerton series has been. There is one great scene halfway through the book when Eloise's brothers arrive that is laugh out loud funny, but it is too short by far. Still a worthy buy, but different from her usual books.

Somewhere in the beginning of the book Eloise reflects that she's spent most of her life looking for a good conversation. It is clear, pretty much from the get-go, that the last person Eloise is going to get a good conversation from is Phillip.

The main thrust of the book is Sir Phillip's character development. He's a stodgy, solitary botanist whose depressive wife dies and leaves him with eight year old twins. His first thought, aside from being glad she's dead, and guilty that he's glad, is that he needs a new wife to take care of the kids. Enter Eloise.

That's the beginning of the unfortunate story of "To Sir Phillip, With Love." Phillip avoids his children because he is afraid of being a bad father. Avoids them. 24/7. He comments to himself, more than once, that it is really, really too much to ask him to talk about his feelings. He certainly is very bad at it. He can't have conversations about much of anything, let alone important things - he is allergic to conversations about important things. When he speaks, it is as though every word has to be dredged out of his throat like sledge from a lake.

And not only that - he makes Eloise feel *bad* because she likes to talk! He tells her, over and over again, that she talks too much. And he means it.

Eloise, who Phillip does successfully wound with his nastyness, at several points in the book finds herself tempted to do exactly what Phillip's depressive wife did: sit and mope, sit and cry, stare at a book and not even read it. Every time this happened I thought: no wonder Phillip's wife was so depressed. She was living with a man who understands plants better than people, and nobody on earth less than himself.

I believe that the novel is supposed to suggest that Phillip and Eloise learn and grow. That Phillip learns to trust himself, and thus becomes more communicative and affectionate. That Eloise learns a little self-discipline and starts respecting other people's space instead of indulging her own need to chatter.

But I really didn't want Eloise to change - for example, I did not want her to decide that after refusing six prospective suitors for one reason or another, she would settle for Phillip because they rubbed along well together and that's quite enough -

and by the time Phillip started exhibiting minor modifications in his taciturn behavior, it was a case of too little, too late.

Like others I did not expect to like this story of Eloise very much at all. In the other Bridgerton stories Eloise came off more annoying than not, but in her own story she emerges as a deeply caring, warm woman who decides to take charge of her life and take a huge risk and run off to the home of Phillip Crane a man she had been writing to for over a year. At 28 Eloise is feeling desperate to find her own life and her own romance could Phillip be the one? Phillip is a male hero of a different sort - deeply damanged inside by an abusive father, left to feel incapable of making his first wife even marginally happy (she killed herself) and believing himself not worthy or capable of being a good father to his twins - Phillip buries himself in his greenhouse where he works as a botonist. He has written to Eloise and suggested perhaps they could marry. In writing he feels a safety because he does not have to reveal all the complicated turmoil of his inner thoughts. However Eloise surprises him with a visit and she is like a tornado in his quiet house. At first they seem totally not to suite but sometimes opposites do attract and since Phillip had been without a woman for 8 years and Eloise a 28 year old virgin - they do become compatible at first through passion. Well that is a good beginning - and enough it would appear for Phillip. He has a mother for his children and finally a willing bed partner what more is there. Eloise not one to be content with mediocrity she wanted more communication, she wanted Phillip to be closer to his children, she wanted love. And this just was a beautiful different kind of love story. This is one story where the most romantic parts of the book and the most emotional come after the wedding!! I would be remiss not to mention the brothers Bridgerton who make a stong appearance in this book - they are such an entertaining group and proudly Phillip holds his own - it is classic Julia Quinn! I loved this book as I have enjoyed all the Bridgerton novels - you will not be disappointed.

Although previous reviews I've read (mainly the ones that may be classified as "Spotlight Reviews") completely bash this book, I've found it touching and entertaining. Perhaps, when compared to previous Julia Quinn novels, this book doesn't leave much of her trademark wit and banter, but it allows Quinn to bring more serious matters to the forefront. Sure we've "experienced" personal problems such as emotional abuse, insecurity, familial loss, but now were confronting postpartum depression (well, let's just label it depression in all), child abuse, and more emotional conflicts thrown in the mix. Quinn's talented writing is effective when it comes to matters such as these, after all, it's a story of dealing with life's problems. And so, it surprises me to read reviews that demand for the characters to "get over it," when in reality we all know that life is rarely ever that easy (and even more importantly, this book would be really short). Granted, regardless of the seriousness of the subject matter, you go through a roller coaster of emotions and to an extent, one could consider that a Julia Quinn trademark. One minute you sympathize with Philip's situation, and the next you're laughing at the farce involving Eloise, Philip, and the four Bridgerton men.

The story fits perfectly well for Eloise's personality; it allows us to see her as more than just a clever, witty, snoopy individual (all fine qualities I assure you). We always knew Eloise's playful side, but now we're exposed to her vulnerabilities but retained her strong character. Eloise made the story light in an otherwise dark and delicate text, if it got any "darker," God forbid the kind of reviews and complaints you'd make towards the author!

In all, To Sir Philip... did not show any decline in talent on Quinn's part. If you still find yourself disagreeing with me, at least consider the epilogue at the end of the book. The sincere love emanating from the letter is vintage Julia Quinn. Her innate capabilities of writing such a passage without diving into a pool of clichés and cheese should at least restore a bit of your confidence in her as a writer...