Lily's Reviews > The Favourite

Helen, the king's mistress, is dying and on her deathbed she asks her sister Jane the queen’s favorite lady-in-waiting to take her baby, the king's bastard, as her own and how could Jane deny this? But for this to happen she would have to marry. Viscount Bardulf noticing the absence of his favorite person to annoy goes to investigate it and discovers that she is about to agree to marry someone else to fulfill her sister's last wish, he then decides to suggest to the queen, who was already unhappy with Jane for leaving her to visit with the king's mistress, that she should be the one to decide who Jane will marry, while making sure it would be him without making it look like he planned it all, sounds wonderful right? a hero who always liked the girl and can't stand the idea of her marrying someone else and manipulates things so that he gets the girl... I thought so too, but then they get married and things start to go downhill, first he doesn't let go of the act of pretending that he doesn't care about anything or anyone which confuses you on how he is going to woo Jane by doing that and also he utters the following phrase that will change the trajectory of the whole book:
“In truth, I have very little notion of how to treat a wife. I think the easiest thing will be if I simply treat you as my latest mistress.”

After that almost every conversation they had the topic "mistresses" was brought up and can you even blame Jane for that? why would you say something like that to your virgin wife? of course she will wonder if what you two are sharing is how you're with your mistresses, some people might like his answers about his mistresses since it made it clear that he had no emotional connection with them, but for me the constant reminder that he visited mistresses while already knowing the h who never even kissed anyone was fucking annoying and a big turn off and it killed all my romantic notions that he was already half in love with her before her sister died and the book tries to sell us this narrative later but i wasn't buying it, you always liked her but couldn't keep it in your pants? ok sure...

even though he knew the topic made the heroine jealous he used it to hurt her by telling her during a fight that "he and his mistresses had better things to do in bed than talk" he was a pompous hypocrite who got mad at her for wanting to know more about him because only him was allowed to know about the heroine's childhood, family and past but she was not allowed the same.

The only good thing about this book was the sex scenes, it was the only time i could really see any connection between them and that he liked her, but even this he ruined for me, happy he was that she lost some of her shyness in the bedroom and decided to proclaim that "now she was wife and mistress"
"Are you jealous, wife? You have no need to be for you are wife and mistress both"
i think we were supposed to swoon over this guys...

After losing all my braincells due to the word "mistresses" appearing on every page at this point i didn't even have the energy to get mad, i was at a point where he could kiss her feet every day and declare undying love and i still wouldn't be able to warm up to him.

Other than that most of the time nothing happens in the book, travels to the countryside, comes back to the city, servants this servants that, most of the time the heroine is stuck in an apartment, it's an infinite loop of going to sleep and waking up, something i wouldn't even notice if i was enamored with this couple, but most of the time i was annoyed, particularly with the hero.


age: H28/h25
om drama: no
ow drama: i would say yes, the h was constantly jealous of "his mistresses" and the topic causes angst even if we don't see any of them
cheating: no
hea: yes