ARC Review: Portrait of a Scotsman by Evie Dunmore

“what makes these books so unique, because we learn and understand so much about history, and the level of detail and information in each is absolutely mind blowing. They are not your typical historical romance novels centered just on our main couple.”
~ Under the Covers

Recommended Read!

If you haven’t yet picked up Evie Dunmore’s books of League of Extraordinary Women, let me just tell you why you should. They are historical romances in London in 1880 following different women that are part of the suffragist movement trying to amend the British laws to be more inclusive of women rights. Did I love the romances and each of the women portrayed? Why yes I did. Did I learn a lot about the British Suffragist Movement with these books? Yes, a lot! And this is what makes these books so unique, because we learn and understand so much about history, and the level of detail and information in each is absolutely mind blowing. They are not your typical historical romance novels centered just on our main couple.

But regarding this third book in the series, we get to follow Hattie this time, the sweet and lovely Hattie who is everything we would have thought: gentle, kind, and much more representative of what we imagine the women were like at that time: extremely sheltered with little to no knowledge of what goes on in the bedroom and it’s a nice change of pace, compared to the previous two books.

Our male lead, Lucian, is a cold business man that has a self-made fortune and is in direct competition with her father. We hear snippets & hints of Blackstone in the previous novels and I have to say that he does not disappoint!

In terms of how steamy and nerve racking the romance was, I would say I found the previous books much more satisfying. There was something missing in this couple that made it enjoyable but not unforgettable. Nonetheless, it still gave me angst, as well as hope that they would still make it. This is a forced marriage because of scandal in a compromising position type of romance, but we also get at some point the one-bed trope too.

What I enjoyed the most about this book was the character development with Hattie. Seeing her go from a frightful, scared and sometimes oblivious to the cause that she was fighting for, in this book she grows and finds realization of the injustices that women faced. Her and Lucian’s development is what made this book worthwhile for me, and not necessarily the romance between the two.

Overall this continues to be an extraordinary set of historical romances that I absolutely adore and cannot wait until the next one comes out!