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There's your cover blurb: This Book Turned Me Into (Even More Of) An Anti-Monarchy Communist: Save A Cow, Eat The Rich. Now mind ye the only reason Annabelle is involved with the political movement is exchange for them paying her tuition. She will be one of the first female students, but she is charged with supporting the women's suffrage movement in exchange for her scholarship.
There is implacable opposition to this from all corners, not just from men alone but other women too, and including the Tory party and Queen Victoria. It could be a legitimately terrible book (*cough* The Shadows Between Us*cough*), and I would still give it a high rating just because it succeeded in holding my attention, because my attention is often so hard to hold. 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. However, the story, this deliciously angst-filled plot, the yearning, the complex characters so reminded me of McNaught's. Lady Catriona Campbell, assistant to her father, Alastair Campbell, an Oxford professor, Scottish earl, and owner of a castle in the Highlands.I've said nothing about the plot, but I don't need to: you've read it all before, and as might be discerned from the hopelessly backwards language above, it all boils down to a Manly Male who knows better than the silly Feminine Female. At 25, the offer of a stipend at Lady Margaret Hall, the first college recently allowing female students to attend, has been the miraculous, and last, opportunity to flee a life of frustration as an unpaid poor relation drudging her days away in her cousin’s house in Kent. Even on a practical level this wouldn't have been possible given how gowns were constructed then, but Annabelle just draws all the men's eyes with her astounding beauty, etc. I raced through this novel; there was something about the quality of writing and atmosphere that hooked me from page one, and simply wouldn't let me go.
Why am I supposed to be rooting for a man who, in the throes of his "passion," ruminates on how he could get away with kidnapping and raping the woman he wants to have sex with? Mundane gestures became infused with meaning; her senses opened and sharpened, and there was an unnerving awareness of the rapid beat of her heart against her ribs. Because this author's debut, BRINGING DOWN THE DUKE, transports me back to a time when I was devouring the novels by McNaught. A beautiful woman who speaks her mind is rare, and it’s a shame that she isn’t in the same social standing as him.I liked the different dynamics happening and I enjoyed Sebastian's relationship with his brother and liked how much it evolved. I loved how it highlighted how difficult women had it back then but how much they still fought against societal standards men created.
She simply wanted the life she could have had if she were a man, inheriting her family home and money, being able to go to Oxford at any time if she so wished. 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. I get that the romance genre must have Lust and Sex - but does it have to take over the entire plot? And then there's Annabelle, who repeatedly acts like an idiot, but whom we're told is very smart because she's read Thucydides; whose political and moral principles seem to be based on the best interests of whomever she last spoke to; and who never once seemed like the impoverished but genteel daughter of a rural Victorian clergyman whom she purported to be . She stomps into his room to suck his dick in one scene, but then literally struggles under him when he goes to “mount” her because of her “feminine resistance.I enjoyed this romantic historical fiction so much that I am impatiently waiting for the next in this series! Their sex scenes were so weird and uncomfortable, as Annabelle was consistently the one out of control and lacking agency. During the last 16 years, his life has been devoted to duty and, at the age of 35, he has become the most powerful duke in England; even the scandal of a divorce failed to mar his reputation. The sex scenes were incredibly frustrating because they insisted on constantly reminding us that the Duke was a Macho Manly Man and Annabelle was a Fragile Feminine "Female" (WHY are the women in this book referred to as "females" as though they're farm animals?
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