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

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What an absolutely stunning, riveting, painfully gorgeous book!…It’s not only the best historical romance I’ve read in a long, long time, it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read! I adored it!” —Megan Crane, USA Today bestselling author It also had a great cast of secondary characters that were once again fully realize with personalities of their own - outside the needs of the MC. It’s clear we’ll get stories from the main female characters and I’m very excited to read how their HEA comes about. Now for what were all here for… the romance. Oh. My. God. The romance in this book was steamy, tension filled, slow burn and explosive in parts, but it also featured some truly soft and bittersweet moments that just made me love these characters even more. It does have a forbidden romance feel to it, their social standings, as well as the time they are living doing their best to keep them apart. But you could just tell from their first meeting that this was going to go off with a bang, a boy did it. The smut was just so well written, and I loved getting it from both sides, seeing Sebastian not want to overwhelm Annabelle, nor make her feel beholden to him because of their societal positions, and then Annabelle just wanting to jump him at any given moment. It certainly got me a little hot under the collar in parts, but I loved their emotional development as much as their romantic.

Evie Dunmore’s Bringing Down the Duke dazzles and reminds us all why we fell in love with historical romance.” —Julia London, New York Times bestselling author Bringing down the Duke was one of the best books I’ve ever read—absolutely adored it. Dunmore had me in tears, had me holding my breath…the emotion and passion made the book ache and sing.” —Jane Porter, New York Times bestselling authorD azzles and reminds us all why we fell in love with historical romance' JULIA LONDON, New York Times bestselling author of Seduced by a Scot

Sure words and insults were exchanged but as their “courting” was not the usual too, he should have realize he could not come and barge in her home like a madman and profess his undying love when he told her with conviction she was no match for a duchess position. It's 1879 in Victorian England. Our heroine Annabelle is very intelligent, very well educated (by her late vicar/scholar father) but also very poor. She's living in Chorleywood with her stuffy vicar cousin Gilbert and his family at the beginning of the book, serving as their unpaid nanny/governess/maid, but she wants more from her life. When she is offered a place at Oxford University's new women's college, she has to manipulate Gilbert into agreeing to this, which means promising to send him two pounds a month to pay for a replacement for her and also hiding from him the fact that she is being sponsored by the National Society for Women's Suffrage.I never once felt that Annabelle and the Duke were in love. It just seemed like they were really, really horny for one another. It always really annoys me when the attraction between two people is wholly centered on lust and sex, because it seems like a really fraught foundation for a relationship, and because I just get really annoyed when characters think with their genitals all the time. Did Annabelle and the Duke have one single moment together where they did something other than slaver over one another? There are some throwaway lines where the Duke mentions he likes that Annabelle is smart, but it's constantly overridden by his - frankly - disturbing hyperfixation on how beautiful and sexy she is. I get that the romance genre must have Lust and Sex - but does it have to take over the entire plot? I’m not saying it wasn’t a good novel. I just wasn’t wowed by it. Nevertheless, the writing was great. The story flowed and it easily engaged, I just didn’t love it. In between all of his nonsense, there's also a great amount of ugly gender essentialist language in here about the heroine's Feminine Softness and the hero's Masculine Hardness. This is one of those books that refers to women as "females". 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). And what does shit like "feminine warmth" mean? Do women somehow radiate a special, mystical body heat that fundamentally differs from men? Do their atoms vibrate at some frequency labeled F E M A L E? I'm so tired, authors, don't do this to me.

This is a great historical romance, with a fresh perspective. I highly recommend it and I can’t wait for book two!I have read the future of historical romance, and it's Evie Dunmore' Eva Leigh, author of Dare to Love a Duke