Bringing Down the Duke

From the description, I had really high hopes for this book, and unfortunately I was let down. The description and cover made the book out to be a fun rivals-to-lovers romance, however to me, the story and main characters just didn't do anything particularly interesting for me. While the writing was good, it felt like a very standard steamy historical romance with a class-difference couple, with the suffrage plot feeling more like an afterthought.

As Annabelle, the heroine, was described as a “daring Oxford rebel,” I was expecting a much more passionate and driven character. I never really felt much of a connection to her, despite spending more than half of the book in her POV. I ended up caring more about the side characters, and enjoying their time on page, rather than Annabelle and her love interest Sebastian, which is not what you want when reading a romance.

I also really disliked Sebastian as a love interest. I've read (and enjoyed) a lot of romances where the hero comes off very cold and rude at the beginning, but becomes a well-developed character with a believable romance by the end, so I get exactly what “type” of character he was written as - it's been done many, many times. I just couldn't bring myself to like, or even care about Sebastian at all despite spending a significant amount of the book in his perspective. The way he treated his brother throughout the story really soured my opinion on him as well, and I never really felt like his character grew from that. When they reconciled at the end, it honestly felt very random, and like something that had to get resolved for his whole redemption arc to wrap up by the last chapter. I also noticed he had a habit of looming over Annabelle, sometimes even physically restraining her during emotional moments, which gave me the ick. I think it's supposed to be hot and ~alpha~, but...no thanks. Also, felt like a bizarre choice for what was marketed as a historical romance with feminist overtones.

I honestly never bought the romance between the two characters, it felt more like they lusted after each other and had a few interesting conversations, and jumped right into being obsessed with each other. This could just be my personal preference, but I would have preferred seeing more conversations and banter between them before building up their attraction. I feel like having so much time spent lusting over each other, even very early on in the story, resulted in a lot of time that could have been spent on developing their relationship more.