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

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It's the perfect companion and back story to this romance, as it mirrors the value Annabelle places on her independence and her reluctance to hand over any powers to a man.

Her defining personality trait, really, is that she's Not Like the Other Girls—hence why she'll go to a ball in a skintight, fashionable gown with no undergarments on underneath! When I started at BOTM, I was a professed literary snob—and probably flaunted that term with pride (queue eye roll).There were a lot of entertaining moments that had me smiling, some mild drama, and a lot of angst happening. It was the most annoying kind of “fake woke” book that had relevant enough taglines to draw modern readers in.

It has the equal amounts of funny hilarious moments, Intense emotional scenes, a delicious slow burn, and two stubborn characters who are just perfect for each other even if it’s kind of impossible for them to be together. The flimsy bits about suffrage are just a smokescreen; Annabelle seems perfectly content not to care about that, and all of the plot movement in that direction is smoothed over with Sebastian's manly, manly hands. He constantly thought of Annabelle as someone he could overpower and “protect” and even considered dragging her from her home and locking her up in his room when she refused to be his mistress. I mean, it's got a strong feminist vibe, good message about finding yourself, and main characters that aren't horrid.And it makes me so angry because the foundation for an intriguing and flawed character is there, but anything interesting about him is overshadowed by his Primal Alpha Maleness the narrative insists on bestowing him. She belonged here, right here wrapped in these strong, nonjudgmental, protective arms, and she wasn’t sure where to begin again without him.

He is emotionally abusive towards his younger brother in a way that the narrative never recognises—and yet the narrative would have us believe that Sebastian is one of those good feudal overlords who only ever has the best interests of his tenants at heart.

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.

She’s definitely not in the market for romance, but one meeting with the Duke and sparks are flying everywhere.I know very little about the tropes of the genre, but I can guess that nothing in this book would be considered terribly egregious to the average romance reader (please correct me if I'm wrong), but personally, I struggled.