Synopsis

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….

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

Mini Audiobook review

“Perhaps you can explain it to me, then,” she said, “how is it fair that my utterly inept cousin is in command of me, for no reason other than that he’s a man and I’m a woman? How is it fair that I master Latin and Greek as well as any man at Oxford, yet I am taught over a baker’s shop? How is it fair that a man can tell me my brain was wired wrong, when his main achievement in life seems to be his birth into a life of privilege? And why do I have to beg a man to please make it his interest that I, too, may vote on the laws that govern my life every day?”

4,5 stars

And she did it again! Swept me off my feet!

I listened to that audiobook in one day! One day! I simply couldn’t stop.

I am reading this series in reverse as I began with A Rogue of One’s Own. As I was smitten with that book, I decided to go for Bringing Down the Duke and to listen to this book.

The narration was excellent and I was once more immersed in Oxford, sometimes London, when suffragists tried to change the laws  to gain more freedom.

If Lady Lucie in A Rogue was loud, brash and a little boyish in her manners, going straight to the point, Anabelle is more reserved. She too has a backbone but it’s softened under manners and years of being compliant with her cousin’s rules.

Anabelle is a brilliant mind and has been accepted at Oxford.

Something that would be celebrated now was seen as vaguely scandalous by her pious family, her cousin.

Oxford was deemed a place of debauchery with many drunken students and prostitutes.

But Anabelle wants to learn and she’ll make a bargain with her cousin.

Once in Oxford, she will help the suffragists in their action, becoming the weapon of choice to sway the duke of Montgomery.

“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.”

 

Here too, we have a very different hero from Tristan Ballentine! Where Tristan was debauched, flamboyant and a hedonist, Sebastian Montgomery seemed rigid, righteous, dutiful and cold.

But let Anabelle melt that cold façade and soon sparks will fly and the stoic Duke will become obsessed with her.

That book was a little jewel in romance.

Playing on a very interesting historical background, the story follows two great characters, opposite in their disposition but undeniably attracted to each other.

There will be wooing, resistance, a sense of duty, longing and lots of chemistry!

Some angst as their station are so different and their love seem impossible.

Compared with A Rogue of One’s Own, I’d say that if the suffragist fight was present, the plot centered more on the romance story. But the execution was flawless and so enjoyable to read!

I would recommend this book wholeheartedly if you are a fan of romance!

Have you read it?

Thanks for reading!

Sophie