A classy read!
Bringing Down the Duke (A League of Extraordinary Women)
by Evie Dunmore
Well what a satisfying read by debut writer Evie Dunmore.
I cheered for Annabelle Archer, intelligently gifted vicar's daughter as she struggled to make her dreams come true. An education at Oxford. It's 1879 and that august institution has just opened its doors to women. I chafed at the burdens Annabelle was forced to endure as the daughter of a deceased vicar whose livelihood now depended upon her brother. Now she was not only poor, but a cheap downtrodden worker without any recourse, for that same opined brother?
And Annabelle's involvement with the suffragettes!
(I love any stories that point out these amazing women. We stand on their shoulders with the right to vote and to hold property, and to not be property, because of their sacrifices, even unto death.)
Annabelle has been charged with targeting Sebastian Devereux, the rather frightening Duke of Montgomery to the cause. Meanwhile Sebastian has been charged by Queen Victoria to work to bring Disraeli back into power in the upcoming election.
Victoria's disgust of the suffragettes is total. (Which to our modern way of thinking is totally strange. But then Victoria saw the gulf between royalty and the commoner as something ordained by God. So not even on her radar is the discrepancy that one of the most powerful people on the planet at this time being a woman.)
Naturally Sebastian and Annabelle are on course for a resounding head on collision.
And that contact leaves both of them shaken. From this grows a story that has quite a few surprises and gigantic heart.
Well researched, grounding the novel in reality. Coupled with a depth of emotion, all the ingredients to make this a winner!
A Berkley Group ARC via NetGalley
*****
by Evie Dunmore
I cheered for Annabelle Archer, intelligently gifted vicar's daughter as she struggled to make her dreams come true. An education at Oxford. It's 1879 and that august institution has just opened its doors to women. I chafed at the burdens Annabelle was forced to endure as the daughter of a deceased vicar whose livelihood now depended upon her brother. Now she was not only poor, but a cheap downtrodden worker without any recourse, for that same opined brother?
And Annabelle's involvement with the suffragettes!
(I love any stories that point out these amazing women. We stand on their shoulders with the right to vote and to hold property, and to not be property, because of their sacrifices, even unto death.)
Annabelle has been charged with targeting Sebastian Devereux, the rather frightening Duke of Montgomery to the cause. Meanwhile Sebastian has been charged by Queen Victoria to work to bring Disraeli back into power in the upcoming election.
Victoria's disgust of the suffragettes is total. (Which to our modern way of thinking is totally strange. But then Victoria saw the gulf between royalty and the commoner as something ordained by God. So not even on her radar is the discrepancy that one of the most powerful people on the planet at this time being a woman.)
Naturally Sebastian and Annabelle are on course for a resounding head on collision.
And that contact leaves both of them shaken. From this grows a story that has quite a few surprises and gigantic heart.
Well researched, grounding the novel in reality. Coupled with a depth of emotion, all the ingredients to make this a winner!
A Berkley Group ARC via NetGalley
*****
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