Romance Challenge: Recommend a book to your friends

 "Recommend a romance book you’ve read to a friend or family member."

    I'm not just going to recommend a book, rather, I'm going to recommend Evie Dunmore's four-book series A League of Extraordinary Women.

    I've always said that I've learned a lot of history from reading historical romances, and this series is an excellent example of why this is so. They are thoroughly researched, yes, but they were also beautifully written and engaging, and I felt as if I were a silent friend and member of their suffragette chapter, along for their very bumpy ride.

The books are set in Victorian England in the 1880s and chronicle just how convoluted the fight for rights has always been.  Some of the more interesting things they cover:

• Queen Victoria's own passionate disapproval of women's rights.
• Women's suffrage in England (which didn't occur until 36 years after the series begins).
• The right of women to own their own property after marriage.
• Laws that allowed a husband to have his wife jailed if she decided to live apart from him.
• Colonial art theft.

This series covers the lives of four friends who are among the very first women to attend Oxford University and the men they fall in love with. Most of the eight main characters are based on real-life suffragists and their allies who recognized injustice and fought alongside their wives and lovers (you can read about the real people who inspired many of the main characters at the bottom of this page) to help create a world where men and women can be true partners.

I especially loved how the books, which focus on the significant misogyny of the time, never cross the line into misandry.  The men (and women) range from good to bad, but nearly everyone falls somewhere in between the extremes.   Something that's interesting (and kind of cool) is that all four book titles honor the allies:

• Bringing Down the Duke - Suffragette/Country girl Annabelle meets the Duke of Montgomery, Queen Victoria's Tory political strategist. My second favorite of the series.
• A Rogue of One's Own - The heroine is more prickly than I like, the hero is a bit too handsome, though that in itself causes some humor. Focuses on a sympathetic eye on sex workers, who the heroine helps on occasion.
• Portrait of a Scotsman - My favorite of the series, as the characters come from lower or middle-class beginnings (though they or their families have attained some wealth).  This book contains one of the very best grovels I've ever encountered.   
• The Gentleman's Gambit - Heroine is a linguist and brilliant in her own right.  Hero is from the Levant and is interested in returning local artifacts stolen by British colonial powers.  The book turns the traditional grovel on its head by having the heroine do the groveling (as was contextually reasonable - she genuinely screwed up).

Anyway, I loved the books. Enjoy. :-)