One night. One night in your bed for one percent of company shares. And you shall give it to me in writing that you look after my books. That is the price.

A Rogue of One’s Own

Lady Lucie is fuming. She and her band of Oxford suffragists have finally scraped together enough capital to control one of London’s major publishing houses, with one purpose: to use it in a coup against Parliament. But who could have predicted that the one person standing between her and success is her old nemesis, Lord Ballentine? Or that he would be willing to hand over the reins for an outrageous price—a night in her bed.

Lucie tempts Tristan like no other woman, burning him up with her fierceness and determination every time they clash. But as their battle of wills and words fans the flames of long-smouldering devotion, the silver-tongued seducer runs the risk of becoming caught in his own snare.

As Lucie tries to out-manoeuvre Tristan in the boardroom and the bedchamber, she soon discovers there’s truth in what the poets say: all is fair in love and war…

In preparation for Portrait of a Scotsman’s release (one of my 2021 anticipated releases), I finally finished the second book in Evie Dunmore’s A League of Extraordinary Women series! 

A Rogue of One’s Own follows Lucie, the leader of the Oxford suffrage movement and a slightly disgraced lady, and Tristan, a Lord and war veteran with a roguish reputation with women. In an attempt to further her cause, Lucie buys control of a publishing house to use it to speak out against Parliament. But there’s a problem. Tristan buys out 50% of the shares of the same company. He’s willing to give her majority control in exchange for one thing: one night of passion. 

I will admit that at first, it took me a little while to get the story. I remember not liking Tristan from his appearance in Bringing Down the Duke, and I had found Lucie to be a little standoffish. However, by the end, the story completely grabbed me, and I was in love. We get more context for Tristan’s roguish reputation, humanizing him and making him a lot more sympathetic. We also get to see that behind Lucie’s rough exterior is just a desire to feel safe and be loved, which I think many women can relate to. 

While I did thoroughly enjoy the book, it would be negligent of me not to highlight the issue of cultural appropriation present in the book. It’s a slight spoiler, but Tristan, a white man, has a tattoo inspired by a Hindu god. I understand that this is probably meant to be a commentary on colonialism that is ever-present in the historical romance genre; however, I think that it missed the mark. It felt unnecessary, and the plot would have played out the same if Tristan had a tattoo of something completely different. For an own voices review by arrya on Goodreads that can express this much better than me, please go here.

Overall though, I did enjoy A Rogue of One’s Own. A lot of what I loved about Bringing Down the Duke was still present—the writing style, the banter between characters, the strong female friendship, the nuanced discussion about women’s rights, and feminism. We also got to see more of an exploration into how some men were allies to the movement, which was nice.