Well, I did it. I finished all 8 Bridgerton books in 10 days. They're done, it's over. It was a bit of a game with myself there at the end, just to see how quickly I could get through them. I read the last 7 in 7 days, so that was fun.

Knowing next to nothing about Gregory, other than the fact that he and Hyacinth liked to torment each other, my expectations were pretty much nonexistent for him. As for the plot, I expected our usual progression of: boy meets girl, they either hate each other or something else is keeping them apart, a lot of steam, some sort of conflict, more steam, then everyone lives happily ever after. And what did we get? Almost exactly that.

But also, no we didn't. There was almost...no steam? At all? In the entire book? I was so confused.

Some people didn't like that the main characters were skirting around each other, and that Gregory was in love with someone else for half the book, but I liked it actually. It was a bit refreshing and definitely different than the previous 7 books. It helped Gregory show development and he went from a "green boy" trying to emulate the love his older brothers had to a man who understood what love looked like for him.

At the end, the drama was almost too ridiculous, which lowered my rating a bit, but my appreciation for Gregory not being as much of an ass as his brothers counteracted that, landing us at a solid 4.

Not that anyone asked, but I think my final ranking of all 8 Bridgerton books is: 1, 4, 6, 2, 8, 7, 5, 3 (god dammit, Benedict)