Bringing Down the Duke: swoony, feminist and romantic, perfect for fans of Bridgerton (A League of Extraordinary Women)

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I think the most crucial point for me was that even though I love modern and trail-blazing heroines, I didn’t feel that Annabelle was extraordinary for her time, not like the series promised.

I wish they had connected this way first and the physical attraction came in slowly later, as that would have been more natural. The setting seemed incredibly realistic to the historic period, as were the majority of events and our characters interactions, though the author did allow for it to be a little more modern in parts. He clearly states that he sees Annabelle as a lady, but he doesn’t think she’s good enough to be his lover or his wife. How many people thought that the female brain was feeble, and that intelligent women were unattractive! When Sebastian sends her a certain book to read, Annabelle realises that a sense of humour lurks beneath his cool exterior.I know very little about the tropes of the genre, but I can guess that nothing in this book would be considered terribly egregious to the average romance reader (please correct me if I'm wrong), but personally, I struggled. It just left a bad taste in my mouth, and I'm extra annoyed with it for giving me such high expectations at the start. She’s been told she must recruit men to support the cause, and in her sights is the Duke of Montgomery, Sebastian Devereux. I started reading Regency romance when I was 12 (yeah, I know, whatever) and I have always loved it.

There is a difference between being a lover and a mistress – one entails equality, the other entails an imbalance of power. Spunky heroines, banter between hero and heroine, and women not afraid of going head to head with a duke was what made me come back again and again. Before I even start my review of this book, I think it would be remiss of me not to talk about something that’s been on my mind – something that other reviewers seem to have completely missed. expressing in all the conversations, the gestures, the sensuality, the delicate love scenes, the barely restrained emotions, the careful flirtations, and oh so fitting the mood of two completely different realities coming face-to-face, like those of commoner early-feminist Annabelle and noblesse oblige conservative Sebastian, that have to decide which direction their own private world will have to take while the outer one glares disapprovingly. This book had such a different feel than any others I have read from the time period and I loved how it made me feel.I thought the women's suffrage movement was an original and perfect backdrop for this romance to be set against. Evie Dunmore shows us how far women have come, how women fought for what we consider normal and rightfully ours. Like I mentioned, the political activism quickly becomes background noise and it is only used as a plot device to drive the heroine into her saviour Duke’s powerful arms. I like how Annabelle sees beyond his cold, severe ducal facade to the man beneath - a man with a steadfast heart, who can be charming and makes her feel cherished.

What he doesn’t need is a group of suffragettes invading his home, particularly as Queen Victoria regards them as ‘wicked, foolish creatures’. Going places without a chaperone, being alone with an unmarried man, wearing a skintight dress without undergarments (seriously this type of dress DID NOT exist), the use of the wrong honorifics, and language that felt too modern all appear here. When it comes to women’s rights from an intersectional perspective, this book does an okay job depicting the intersection of class and gender through its protagonist, Annabelle. The attraction was now firmly back in place, yes, she was beyond denying it: she was hopelessly preoccupied with the grim-faced aristocrat across the footwell. In fact, Bringing Down the Duke seems to use its thin veneer of wokeness as an excuse to revel in gender essentialism.This just may be targeted towards a different romance reader, and I maybe expected something different because of all the glowing reviews. Again, this is 2019, I shouldn't have to say that this sort of language completely erases trans and non-binary/genderqueer people from existence, and even cis people who don't have the right kinds of bodies (curvy cis men and lean cis women exist, amazingly).