Bringing Down the Duke: swoony, feminist and romantic, perfect for fans of Bridgerton (A League of Extraordinary Women)

Product Information

This was a fantastic book, and I'm so happy that it is part of a series, and cannot wait to continue it! While I was interested in the Duke's brother and in Annabelle's friends, I really wasn't all that fascinated by either Annabelle or Sebastian. Other than being extremely turned off by the romance, the plot was nonexistent and supremely surface-level.

Annabelle cares about women’s rights because she cares about herself and doesn’t want to be the property of some ugly idiot. 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. There are a few times when her passion about women’s rights and the classics shine through, but for the most part, she’s a bystander in her own story.

This just may be targeted towards a different romance reader, and I maybe expected something different because of all the glowing reviews.

It is about a 25 year old woman, Annabelle, who is vastly over-educated for her low station and has ruined her prospects by having an out-of-wedlock affair when she was 17. Annabelle’s recuperation at Claremont affords an opportunity for them to talk and get to know each other. Bringing Down the Duke gives us the best that the romance genre has to offer: light-hearted fun, steamy sex scenes, and lots of brooding, read-between-the-lines dialogue.I never read romance books because I assumed they were too cheesy and poorly written to be considered worthy of my time. And as it is with this old and predictable drama, it takes a dramatic life or death situation for the lofty Duke to come to his senses and propose.