{"id":43,"date":"2008-07-16T11:54:16","date_gmt":"2008-07-16T16:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=43"},"modified":"2025-08-01T19:35:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T00:35:16","slug":"book-review-phyllida-and-the-brotherhood-of-philander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/book-review-phyllida-and-the-brotherhood-of-philander\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-17007\" src=\"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/20080429_phyllida.jpg\" alt=\"Cover of PHYLLIDA AND THE BROTHERHOOD OF PHILANDER by Ann Herendeen\" width=\"250\" height=\"377\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Phyllida-Brotherhood-Philander-Ann-Herendeen\/dp\/0061451363\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander<\/em><\/a><br \/>\nby Ann Herendeen<br \/>\npublished by Harper Paperbacks<\/p>\n<p>This book, whose tagline is \u201cA man in love with his wife and his boyfriend,\u201d wouldn\u2019t normally catch my eye because m\/m isn\u2019t my kink. I bought it for an <a href=\"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/i-am-so-getting-this-book\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">entirely different reason<\/a>. So now that I bought it and read it and thoroughly enjoyed myself (oooh, have you noticed this trend about what I review?), I must speak my piece.<\/p>\n<p>Here we are in Regency England (and those of us in Romancelandia are more or less completely and totally comfortable in Regency England, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.georgette-heyer.com\/who.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Heyer or no Heyer<\/a>) and a sodomite wishes to marry to fulfill his duty to his family name while still continuing his unabashed lifestyle. He finds the right chick, marries her, figures out he <em><strong>so<\/strong><\/em> really doesn\u2019t mind doing her, thinks she\u2019s refreshing and falls in love with her blahblahblah (yeah, you know how it goes), then meets the male love of his life and we all end up happily ever after <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">in the same bed<\/span> with nary a menage a trois to be had. Of course, what would a Regency romance be without a little spying here and there?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>After some reflection, I have to admit that the <a href=\"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/the-authorial-beau-monde\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">mixed third-person omniscient and third-person limited points of view<\/a> was fun and refreshing.<\/p>\n<p>Now, one more thing I found interesting: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.librarything.com\/work\/2312121\/reviews\/57901781\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">A review of the book<\/a>, wherein the reviewer\u2014who gave it 3 stars\u2014says:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"normal\"><p>The book is \u2026 okay. It is not stunning, nor is it horrible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, okay. That\u2019s 3-star worthy right there. A 3 is a C. A C is perfectly average. No harm, no foul. But then the reviewer goes on to say:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"normal\"><p>I stayed up all night to read the last two hundred pages, because I was engrossed with the characters\u2019 stories. However, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll be borrowing this from the library again, nor will I be purchasing it any time soon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Color me highly amused. <strong><em>I stayed up all night to read the last two hundred pages because I was engrossed with the characters\u2019 stories.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Yeah. Okay. That\u2019s called \u201cthe mother lode.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Good show, Ms. Herendeen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander by Ann Herendeen published by Harper Paperbacks This book, whose tagline is \u201cA man in love with his wife and his boyfriend,\u201d wouldn\u2019t normally catch my eye because m\/m isn\u2019t my kink. I bought it for an entirely different reason. So now that I bought it and read it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[521],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17402,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions\/17402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}