[Review] Bringing Down the Duke, by Evie Dunmore

Title: Bringing Down the Duke
Series: A League of Extraordinary Women #1
Author: Evie Dunmore
Publisher: Piatkus
Number of pages: 368
Publication date: September 3rd 2019

Synopsis:

A stunning debut for author Evie Dunmore and her Oxford Rebels, in which a fiercely independent vicar's daughter takes on a powerful duke in a love story that threatens to upend the British social order.

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.

Sebastian is appalled to find a suffragist squad has infiltrated his ducal home, but the real threat is his impossible feelings for green-eyed beauty Annabelle. He is looking for a wife of equal standing to secure the legacy he has worked so hard to rebuild, not an outspoken commoner who could never be his duchess. But he wouldn't be the greatest strategist of the Kingdom if he couldn't claim this alluring bluestocking without the promise of a ring...or could he? Locked in a battle with rising passion and a will matching her own, Annabelle will learn just what it takes to topple a duke....

Review:

I had high hopes for this book, after having read very good reviews.

When I started to read it, I didn’t get why I wasn’t feeling the same as everyone else. I went to look at a few more reviews and found some people whom I agreed with. I just thought “ah, these are exactly my feelings”. And what feelings are those?

Well, Bringing Down The Duke is a book about a woman that wants to go to study at Oxford, but for that she has to join a Suffragist Society so that they’ll pay the tuition. I would have liked if Annabelle was more invested in the cause, because she behaved like it was a hard task to be part of it, like she was just doing it for the support at Uni. To be honest, I did not connect with her. For me, she was a bit annoying.

I mostly liked Sebastian, although he’s definitely not on my top list of heroes.

I don’t even know what else to say about the book, because it took me quite a bit of time to read it, and yet even though I finished it yesterday, I barely remember the story.

All in all, the book did not do it for me. It was just a plain romance, nothing much. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t great.