“Perhaps this is not a question of staying out of trouble, Your Grace. Perhaps this is about deciding on which side of history you want to be.”

Bringing Down the Duke

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….

I don’t often read historical romances without an element of magical realism to them, but Bringing Down the Duke has changed my mind on the genre, and now I’m hooked. 

The book follows Annabelle and Sebastian, a whip-smart woman from a family without many means who manages to earn a scholarship to the newly formed women’s college at Oxford University. There’s just one catch: she must support the rising suffrage movement as a condition of her scholarship, and her first task is to recruit influential men to support their cause. 

Her first charge is Sebastian Devereux, the cold and cunning Duke of Montgomery, who has plans of his own to win back his ancestral home by following the orders of the Queen. However, both of their plans start to go awry when their growing feelings for each other become unavoidable. 

Bringing Down the Duke is a perfect combination of unwilling enemies to lovers and forbidden love. Annabelle and Sebastian’s causes are diametrically opposed, which should make them enemies, but quickly that opposition shifts into tension-filled attraction. It was so much fun to read, especially when combined with the fact that they come from entirely different social stations. Everything about the society they live in tells them that they shouldn’t be together, but they fall quickly for each other anyway. It’s heartbreaking to read, but it also makes their happy ending more satisfying when you realize what they have to overcome.

Since this is a historical romance, I can’t write the review without talking about the setting: the Women’s Rights Movement. I loved how the complexity of it is handled, especially since some of the women opposed it. Evie Dunmore doesn’t shy away from it, which makes the book seem all the more realistic. I also loved how the women involved in the movement are portrayed. They’re strong and resilient while also adhering to the social expectations of the period. There can be a femininity to being a strong woman, and Bringing Down the Duke proves that.

Overall, this was an intelligent and swoony read. Annabelle and Sebastian’s chemistry was spot on, and the side characters introduced were fun and endearing. I’m looking forward to the following books in the series and for whatever Evie Dunmore writes in the future.