The Gentleman’s Gambit (A League of Extraordinary Women)
With The Gentleman’s Gambit, Evie Dunmore concludes her entertaining four-book series about a group of women fighting for suffrage rights in late 19th-century Oxford. In this installment, bookish Catriona has a disastrous record in romance and is focused on her writing. That’s until she meets Elias Khoury on her way back from a swim at her father’s Scottish estate, in a scene that invokes a merry role reversal of Colin Firth meeting Jennifer Ehle at Pemberley in a certain well-loved adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. With Elias, Dunmore brings some new issues to the fore, all while continuing the up-and-down romance shenanigans that readers will expect and enjoy. Elias is from Lebanon, introducing a diverse character, and he has approached Catriona’s father under false pretenses. While presenting himself as a scholar, Elias in fact intends to steal back stolen artifacts, an issue that is still of concern in the modern day. Can Catriona and Elias overcome the gulf between their cultures and divergent life goals as their mutual physical attraction deepens into something more?
While I enjoyed the read, I felt a little disappointment that the push for women’s suffrage takes a backseat in this novel, in favor of other issues. As the story ends, the suffrage battle is far from won, but happily an epilogue set in 1918 updates us on all our favorites from the previous novels. With that in mind, I’d recommend reading the series in order, starting with Bringing Down the Duke.
