The fight for women to be able to retain some money and property under their own name is a very prevalent subplot throughout the book. Her target: Sebastian Devereux, the cold and calculating Duke of Montgomery who steers Britain’s politics at the Queen’s command. There it was, the fire she had sensed behind the ice, smoldering at a thousand degrees hotter than leaping flames. BRINGING DOWN THE DUKE is compulsively readable and a delight to devour; I finished this in a shockingly small handful of hours which, considering my slumpy month, is a miracle. While their initial attraction to each other felt forced at first, I enjoyed their intelligent conversations - they felt genuine and showed the characters making real connections over important topics.

WEDDING STORY - Evie Dunmore A WEDDING STORY - Evie Dunmore

Years later, dozens of romance books devoured, I’m so happy to report that, on that score, I was wrong.

If Bringing Down the Duke had more interesting and likable protagonists with solid character development and if the feminist aspect was inclusive, then this book could have easily been a winner for me.

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

Annabelle, a commoner, is a woman before her time and when the National Suffrage Women’s movement offers her a scholarship at Oxford’s first women’s college, she jumps at the chance. She needs to lobby men of influence to their cause, which is how her path crosses with the Duke of Montgomery's. An intrepid female reporter matches wits with a serious, sexy detective in award-winning author Manda Collins' fun and flirty historical rom-com!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. A protagonists of Britain’s politics and at only 35 one of the most powerful peers of the realm, with an unruly younger brother to manage, a scandalous divorce in his near past, the ancestral ducal seat to regain and now the Queen appointing him chief strategic advisor for the Tory party in the upcoming elections his life is already complicated as it is and, though not opposed on principle, adding support to women’s rights campaign on his agenda is out of the question.