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Her defining personality trait, really, is that she's Not Like the Other Girls—hence why she'll go to a ball in a skintight, fashionable gown with no undergarments on underneath! When I started at BOTM, I was a professed literary snob—and probably flaunted that term with pride (queue eye roll). A deliciously original debut featuring a fiercely passionate suffragette who melts an icy duke's heart. 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. But then the story unfortunately veered into the predictability territory, and not the fun kind of predictability.
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. She will be one of the first female students, but she is charged with supporting the women's suffrage movement in exchange for her scholarship. Bringing Down the Duke is a Victorian romance novel set against the backdrop of women fighting for their rights, which is great.In fact I loved it so much that I already went out and bought the second book which I’m hoping to pick up soon. Well at least Annabelle didn’t think it was proper, the Duke didn’t care one bit, because he was ACTUALLY THE WORST.
She’s definitely not in the market for romance, but one meeting with the Duke and sparks are flying everywhere. It's whilst fulfilling this duty, that she first meets the wealthy and powerful Duke of Montgomery (Sebastian), a cold and brooding man, with links to the Tory party and to Queen Victoria. In fact, Bringing Down the Duke seems to use its thin veneer of wokeness as an excuse to revel in gender essentialism . 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. I never read romance books because I assumed they were too cheesy and poorly written to be considered worthy of my time.It’s the first in a series, and given how much I liked meeting the other women in Annabelle’s suffragette circle, I look forward to future novels. Upon entering college, she becomes an advocate for the women’s suffrage movement, which is how she first encounters the Duke of Montgomery—an influential, ill-tempered political adversary whom she must convince into becoming an ally. I think could have probably gone with the I-love-you-because-true-love stuff if the book hadn't been so realistic-ish in other areas. Their backstory has elements of drama but are never overblown, or overwrought, and come out in the open naturally without being held onto until the last minute. The developing romance is involving, the by-now obligatory bedroom scenes are enlivened by the dialogue, and the insights into the suffragist movement and the situation of women in universities during the late nineteenth century are enlightening.
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