Dunmore has established herself as an immensely capable writer who is able to weave reality badly needed in the historical romance genre. Her previous books followed suffragettes who were varying degrees of worldly pushing back against powerful men and accept from them only what they want. Even marriage is something that is negotiated with extreme care, because Dunmore goes to great lengths to impress upon the reader the enormous gamble a woman took in marrying a man, who would own her as property. That care […]

Just go buy it and read it. Unless you missed the first one. In which case get both. You won’t regret it. Plot: Our heroine is a Difficult Woman (my absolute favourite trope) and a suffragist at a time when most women are property (first of their father’s as children and then of their husbands and good luck to you if you aren’t a man’s property). Understandably, her focus is correcting this heinous injustice and anyone who has a problem with that can go suck […]

I began Dunmore’s books with Bringing Down the Duke (2019) when NPR recommended it last year. I was very happy with it and quickly moved on to A Rogue of One’s Own (2020) this year. The time, place, and characters are familiar from Bringing Down the Duke, where four women worked together for women’s rights and the passage of the Married Women’s Property Act. This time, Lucie is our protagonist. She’s very dedicated to the cause and has been estranged from her family for over ten years. Fortunately, she has a […]