Non-Review: Bringing Down the Duke (League of Extraordinary Women #1)

Bringing Down the Duke, Book 1 in The League of Extraordinary Women by Evie Dunmore

Published By: Berkley Publishing
Publication Date: September 3, 2019
Date Read: March 21, 2025
Genre: Adult – Historical Romance
Source: Bought
Format: E-Book
Pages: 335

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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 suffragists in which a fiercely independent vicar’s daughter takes on a powerful duke in a fiery love story that threatens to upend the British social order.

Bringing Down the Duke is a book that I hadn’t really heard of before it was selected as a monthly pick for my bookclub. I was a little apprehensive to be honest, as while I have read a few historical romance books and liked them, it is far from my chosen genre. Unfortunately this one ended up not being for me at all. I ended up DNF’ing it at around 15%.

Bringing Down the Duke had a really promising premise, following Annabelle, a 25-year-old spinster who is desperate for an education. She ends up being allowed to attend University as one of the first women allowed to do so, and she finds herself getting involved with the suffragette movement. She is determined to win the favour of the impenetrable Duke of Montgomery. I really liked this premise, but honestly I wanted the romance to have started earlier. I ended up getting really bored and this book more than anything in the first 15% was focused just on the suffragette’s movement and I just had o interest in reading that.

Historical is not my chosen genre, and while I have enjoyed The Bridgerton books I just found this one really dry and it wasn’t keeping my attention at all. Add to that, that the few glimpses of the Duke of Montgomery that we saw in the chapters I read he just wasn’t very likeable at all. Due to all of this I thought I would cut my losses and just give up on this one.