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I was entertained because I felt like the novel was pulling from books by Austen, the Brontë sisters, etc.
With all the pent-up longing and desire, it is inevitable that they will eventually succumb, and I enjoyed seeing the role reversal of the heroine seducing the hero. I thought at least that aspect would be something I’d enjoy, but there was zero chemistry between them. Annabelle is stupid and makes rash decisions constantly, not behaving as a woman in that time (even a “feminist”) would. When she arrives in Oxford and starts working for the women’s suffrage movement she finds herself interacting with people much higher in society than her, but that’s never a life she dreamed of.The National Society for Women’s Suffrage has granted her a scholarship, and all she has to do is persuade her cousin to let her go. No easy task when, like most men of the time, he believes that ‘too much education derails the female brain’, but Annabelle cleverly manipulates him into agreeing, with certain conditions attached. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. There were also a lot of really weird references to the characters' "primal" attraction to one another.
I can count on one hand the number of romance novels I've read, and this is actually my very first historical romance novel. Full of witty banter, rich historical detail, and a fantastic group of female friends, the first installment in Dunmore's League of Extraordinary Women series starts with fireworks as Annabelle and Montgomery try to find a path to happiness despite past mistakes and their vastly different places in society. When Sebastian sends her a certain book to read, Annabelle realises that a sense of humour lurks beneath his cool exterior.I'm going to be clamouring for more A League of Extraordinary Women books and likely seriously regretting my decision to read this early because now the wait will feel even longer than just a year. 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. It's not only the best historical romance I've read in a long, long time, it's one of the best books I've ever read!
Annabelle’s recuperation at Claremont affords an opportunity for them to talk and get to know each other.
Her target: Sebastian Devereux, the cold and calculating Duke of Montgomery who steers Britain’s politics at the Queen’s command. It does have a forbidden romance feel to it, their social standings, as well as the time they are living doing their best to keep them apart.
As for the hero, he is the powerful Duke of Montgomery who thinks that his lofty position in society gives him the right to ask things of the heroine that he has no right to ask. Locked in a battle with rising passion and a will matching her own, Annabelle will learn just what it takes to topple a duke….As it turns out, Annabelle is only working with the suffragists because they're paying her tuition, and while she occasionally pays lip service to women's rights, her heart isn't really in it. It always really annoys me when the attraction between two people is wholly centered on lust and sex, because it seems like a really fraught foundation for a relationship, and because I just get really annoyed when characters think with their genitals all the time. Oh, and I also don’t like the way the hero treats his younger brother, but that’s a whole other conversation. Unlike other romances I’ve read, the conflict in the last 1/3 of the book was actually warranted - I believed the stakes and the consequences here, and appreciate the complicated sacrifices that weighed their actions. Fun, full of time period history and setting, steamy tension between Annabelle and the Duke (loved them both).
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