Bringing Down the Duke: 1 (League of Extraordinary Women)

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Overall, Bringing Down the Duke surprised me with its heart, and I look forward to the next in the series. The author kept the information about that particular time well balanced. And I applaud her for writing about a not so overly covered period of time.

Bringing Down the Duke by Evie Dunmore | Hachette UK

This story has everything I love in a romance. Annabelle is smart and competent, and she's not afraid to work hard to make the best of her meager situation. Montgomery is dashing and attentive. Though he comes across a bit cold in the beginning, Annabelle slowly thaws him out. She had never really known her place. Where others were appropriately intimidated, she seemed oddly intrigued by the challenge. Sebastian was so lovely, and attentive. I love it when a character comes across as cold and aloof, but secretly they have the biggest heart hidden away! It melts me every time! Annabelle and Sebastian were wonderful, likable characters. I loved Sebastian. He's seemed so grumpy and cold, but I loved getting to see the man behind the mask as he got to know Annabelle and opened up. He was sweet, protective, and seductive. I thought Annabelle was such a great character. She was strong-willed with a very intriguing past, and I loved her tenacity and attitude. I love how hard she’s worked to better herself and everything she was fighting against. I really enjoyed learning both of their histories, especially hers. I loved watching these two come together, and fight their feelings as their attraction grew. It felt like a fun game of cat and mouse. I loved them butting heads and how Annabelle challenged Sebastian, it was awesome. I loved the build to them coming together and the growth they both experienced. A steamy, intelligent and feel good historical romance, set in Victorian England at the time of the Suffragette movement!Although not everything resonated with me the way I hoped it would. Nevertheless I really enjoyed the way the author portrayed that specific epoch of time. So how did this book leave a mark on me? Well, I couldn't put it down, not even for a second. So I was walking and reading at the same time (danger alert!) when I stumbled over an errant sign on the sidewalk and took a fall. I was mostly ok (other than my pride), but I did skin my knee pretty badly. When it healed, it left this long purple scar behind. Now every time I look at it, I think of the book I thoroughly loved. Debuting Ms. Dunmore has penned a winner, written with flair and suavity, presenting a smooth and evocative prose. A deliciously romantic story firmly grounded in the late Victorian setting, but posing some timeless questions about love against duty and honour or about reputation and safety against freedom and passion, questions that transcend the historical declinations and contingencies while making the tangible inner struggles of the characters deeply resonate. Bringing Down the Duke was a unique and refreshing story and I enjoyed it all! It was a witty, entertaining, and engaging read that was incredibly well told.

Bringing Down the Duke by Evie Dunmore | Book of the Month Bringing Down the Duke by Evie Dunmore | Book of the Month

So of course girly-whirl accidentally runs into Duke at his manor house. There is a misunderstanding, she runs out into the snow, the Duke has to fetch her on his horse, she catches a cold (like Jane in P&P), and has to recuperate on the estate. The plot then goes to hell and the anachronisms take over. The supposed intelligent woman is completely turned into an insipid idiot over her lust. She got in trouble early in life for fornication and destroyed her prospects and here she is again being even more stupid by not learning from her prior mistake. Ugh. 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. She’s been told she must recruit men to support the cause, and in her sights is the Duke of Montgomery, Sebastian Devereux. While I was interested in the Duke's brother and in Annabelle's friends, I really wasn't all that fascinated by either Annabelle or Sebastian.

England, 1879. Annabelle Archer, the brilliant but destitute daughter of a country vicar, has earned herself a place among the first cohort of female students at the renowned University of Oxford. In return for her scholarship, she must support the rising women’s suffrage movement. Her charge: recruit men of influence to champion their cause. Her target: Sebastian Devereux, the cold and calculating Duke of Montgomery who steers Britain’s politics at the Queen’s command. Her challenge: not to give in to the powerful attraction she can’t deny for the man who opposes everything she stands for. When I started at BOTM, I was a professed literary snob—and probably flaunted that term with pride (cue eye roll). I never read romance books because I assumed they were too cheesy and poorly written to be considered worthy of my time. Years later, dozens of romance books devoured, I’m so happy to report that, on that score, I was wrong. So, I'm torn. I don't think I've ever had my opinion on a book change so radically from beginning to end. Up until about the 35% mark, I was confident this was going to be a 5-star book. By the 50% mark, there were a few things bugging me, but I figured they were small enough that I could ignore them, even if it meant slashing off a star from the overall rating. Now, having finished the book, I don't know whether to give it 2 stars or 3 stars. With her sterling debut, Evie Dunmore dives into a fresh new space in historical romance that hits all the right notes.” — Entertainment Weekly Ahoy there me mateys! The appealing cover led to me interest. I adore the bright colors and fun title. The marketing team deserves a lot of credit. I don't normally read romances but this one sounded silly and fun. It is set during the Regency period and the feminine protagonist, Annabelle, is a suffragette and one of the first women to study at Oxford. I expected this to be a story about a strong willed and driven woman who has a hate to love journey. Sadly I had to stop reading at 59.5% as this book went from fun to infuriating.

Bringing Down the Duke book By Evie Dunmore Read Bringing Down the Duke book By Evie Dunmore

What a great debut by Evie Dunmore! I am so happy with all of the amazing debuts coming out recently! This was a fantastic book, and I'm so happy that it is part of a series, and cannot wait to continue it! It was well written, funny, angsty and yet sweet, and I had a lot of fun reading it! It actually reminded me a lot of Pride and Prejudice with its slow building romance, which started off as hostility! It's crazy to think that women were fighting for their rights, against injustice and inequality in 1879, and yet here we still are...I really admire those women who fought so hard so that we could have more rights than they did. Annabelle and Sebastian are not the predictable pair, so common in the genre, composed by the smart-mouthed, anachronistically liberated heroine and the uppity nobleman with a hidden wild side, no, there was instead an authenticity to them which stemmed from the layered, nuanced and vibrant characterisations, so consistently immersed in the historical setting that each of their moves and skirting around also became a sort of social tableau on the customs and mores of their times. They act, think and behave like late Victorian people without becoming stale stereotypes and preserving their own unique personalities, and the realistic hurdles on the path of their relationship, when contemplating such vast class difference in those days, are not magically brushed aside but, on the contrary, cleverly turned into pivotal issues and plot-points. I mean, it's got a strong feminist vibe, good message about finding yourself, and main characters that aren't horrid. It just didn't grab me and pull me in like I wanted it to.

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At the same time, Sebastian is finding Annabelle’s green eyes irresistible; however, she’s a commoner and not fit to be his duchess.

Bringing Down the Duke by Evie Dunmore - Ebook | Scribd Bringing Down the Duke by Evie Dunmore - Ebook | Scribd

D 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 Annabelle is strong and capable, but destitute. When an opportunity to study at Oxford presents itself, she grabs it with both hands. It comes with a scholarship that stipulates her involvement with the women's suffrage movement. She needs to lobby men of influence to their cause, which is how her path crosses with the Duke of Montgomery's. I have read the future of historical romance, and it’s Evie Dunmore’ Eva Leigh, author of Dare to Love a DukeI'm a romantic at heart, so I'm always searching for the perfect romance that speaks to me. And I found exactly what I was looking for in this book. Strong women and the dashing men who value them for their mind and their wit will do it for me every time. I pretty much swooned from beginning to end. After this, I'll read anything by Evie Dunmore. I just won't be walking at the same time... learned that lesson! And the anachronisms are awful. 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. Their attraction was so palpable, so passionate and there were times I wanted to smoosh their faces together and tell them to get it over with. There was so much tension between them, the impossibility of their love made this story heartwrenching. She belonged here, right here wrapped in these strong, nonjudgmental, protective arms, and she wasn’t sure where to begin again without him. England, 1879. Annabelle Archer, the brilliant but destitute daughter of a country vicar, has earned herself a place among the first cohort of female students at the renowned University of Oxford. In return for her scholarship, she must support the rising women's suffrage movement. Her charge: recruit men of influence to champion their cause. Her target: Sebastian Devereux, the cold and calculating Duke of Montgomery who steers Britain's politics at the Queen's command. Her challenge: not to give in to the powerful attraction she can't deny for the man who opposes everything she stands for.