The Duke by Anna Cowan

TL;DR: A delightful angsty sapphic romance. I devoured this.
Source: NetGalley – Thank you to the publisher!!

Plot: Two women meet, have an electric connection, but then one abandons the other to the French revolution and three years later they connect again as enemies.
Characters: I enjoyed these characters a lot, they felt vibrant and I was very captivated.
Setting: While it wasn’t one I could picture, it still had weight to it and felt important to the story.
Romance: Oh my gosh the drama. This was the perfect level of angst for me.

Summary:

Set in a world of powerful female nobles and the women who love them…

Kate, Duke of Howard, is known throughout Europe as a merciless autocrat not to be crossed. Consumed by a bitter rivalry, she avoids society and has vowed never to trap a woman into marriage with a monster like herself.

The beautiful, ambitious courtesan Celine Genet once threw herself on the mercy of the visiting Duke of Howard. She was desperate to escape the guillotine. But after a night of searing passion, the duke left her to the ravages of Revolutionary Paris and didn’t look back. Now Celine is in London and in possession of a dangerous letter that proves the Duke of Howard committed treason as a child – and possibly even murder.

Celine wants a titled husband in return for keeping the duke’s secret, leaving Kate no choice but to parade her around the most fashionable ballrooms. But as Celine takes society by storm, Kate finds herself growing fond of the woman set on destroying her. And as their attraction mounts, Kate faces an impossible choice: keep her childhood secret, or win the woman she loves.

Anna Cowan’s The Duke is an utterly unforgettable, page-turning romance featuring two women who, separately, are a danger to each other, but together, could be the most powerful duo London has ever seen.

Thoughts:

This is a great example of a book that surprised me. I wasn’t expecting to love this one as much as I did, in fact I expected a moderately entertaining romance that I would put down and not think about. And that was not at all what I got. From the beginning of this we have an electric connection between these two characters. They meet and immediately we feel the chemistry between them. They are younger, and in Celine’s case far more naive. Then three years pass and we begin to see what time has done to the The Duke and even more so what war did to Celine.

And that’s where the angst comes in. Celine blackmails the Duke. She has to help Celine find a husband, introduce her to society and see her safely in a home where she will be cared for and loved or Celine will reveal the Duke’s biggest and most dangerous secret. These two are not getting along and this reads as an enemies to lovers, something that feels so intense after that first section that it is delicious.

My favorite bit of this, besides the excellent drama and angst, was the fact that the women helped each other. There were plenty of things standing against these two but there were so many people standing with them. We didn’t have the tropey ‘women vs women’ here. Even the side characters (who I desperately hope we get stories about) were lovely.

If you want an absolutely enthralling sapphic romance, this is the book for you. I highly recommend it.