This book was on my pre-order for months. Evie Dunmore has crafted such a unique world in her books and with the ‘votes for women suffragette movement’ as a historical backdrop. I was fully expecting to enjoy this book and say good bye to the series and characters of this series as this is the last installment, but when I started reading it, I found it wasn’t holding my interest in the way that I had hoped.
In past years, I would have kept reading—ride or die—to complete the book. But in recent years I have been trying to be more intentional with my reading. There are some books where I am like ‘ok this is garbage and I am not into it’ so I pull a DNF and move on, and then there are some books where I am not enjoying it but I am invested enough to keep going to say that I finished it. This year I decided that if I am not enjoying a book, I am just going to set it aside and more on and that’s sort of what happened with this one.
I will get into the reasons why this book wasn’t holding my interest shortly, but I want to point out that even though this book wasn’t a favorite of mine, the series as a whole is great and I recommend it wholeheartedly! While this was a DNF for me, I had a hard time decided if it was just the timing or if it was the book itself. I know that lately I have had a lot going on and maybe it just didn’t hold my attention because I had other things going on, or maybe it was in fact just the book. I plan on setting is aside and maybe some day down the road I will try it again but for now it was a DNF for me.
Summary
Bookish suffragist Catriona Campbell is busy: An ailing estate, academic writer’s block, a tense time for England’s women’s rights campaign–the last thing she needs is to be stuck playing host to her father’s distractingly attractive young colleague.
Deeply introverted Catriona lives for her work at Oxford and her fight for women’s suffrage. She dreams of romance, too, but since all her attempts at love have ended badly, she now keeps her desires firmly locked inside her head–until she climbs out of a Scottish loch after a good swim and finds herself rather exposed to her new colleague.
Elias Khoury has wheedled his way into Professor Campbell’s circle under false pretenses: he did not come to Oxford to classify ancient artefacts, he is determined to take them back to his homeland in the Middle East. Winning Catriona’s favor could be the key to his success. Unfortunately, seducing the coolly intense lady scholar quickly becomes a mission in itself and his well-laid plans are in danger of derailing…
Forced into close proximity in Oxford’s hallowed halls, two very different people have to face the fact that they might just be a perfect match. Soon, a risky new game begins that asks Catriona one more time to put her heart and wildest dreams at stake. (summary from Goodreads)
Review
For me, Catorina was not the most memorable characters in the series. Annabelle, Lucie, and even Hattie had a lot more staying power for me in the series than Catorina did. However, I did expect to have the most in common with Catorina though. She’s an academic and writer and I thought for sure that I would have an instant connection to her but I just didn’t. Likewise with Elias, I thought he would win me other with his exotic job and background but Catorina and Elias just didn’t and I was surprised by that! The subject matter and characters should 100% have bene something that I loved but I think for me it was the history and politics that really overshadowed this book for me and I got board.
To be fair I only read about 50% of the book, but there was so much going on with the politics and history that I had a hard time staying focused and found myself looking to other books to read instead of this one. There wasn’t enough romance to keep me interested, it felt like it was going to be more of a slow burn rather than a hot and spicy book like some of the others in the series. Slow burn plus a lot of history and politics made this one uninteresting to me and I finally had to call it as a DNF. As this is the last book in the series, I feel bad that it ended with a sour taste in my mouth. While not overly bad, it just didn’t have the same chemistry and excitement as the other books in the series. I would have been happy with the other three books being it and just skipping this one all together.
One of the things in this series that I loved was the feminist and suffragette movement as a backdrop but I felt like it really took over the plot. I mean I’m a feminist and proud but this was too much with the history and it just felt clunky and it was missing the magic and balance of the suffragette movement in previous books. So where does that leave me with this one—-for DNF books, I usually rate them as a 1 star and based on how distracted and board I was with this one, I am keeping with that tradition and only doing 1 star for this book. Will I go back and re-read this at another point—possibly. Do I still recommend this series—YES! The other books are great so I suggest reading those instead of this one and honestly the series is good on three books. Would I read other books by this author—-YES. One bad book doesn’t make me no longer a fan of her writing style, it’s just that this book wasn’t for me and that’s ok!
Book Info and Rating
Format 432 pages, Paperback
Published December 5, 2023 by Berkley
ISBN 9780593334669 (ISBN10: 0593334663)
Review copy provided by, personal collection, all opinions are my own and in no way influenced.
Rating: 1 star DNF
Genre: historical fiction, romance
The Lit Bitch 