Review: A Spinster's Guide to Danger and Dukes

A Spinster's Guide to Danger and Dukes by Manda Collins
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

2.5 stars 

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. 

“A friend? I don’t believe a duke can ever be friends with an impecunious spinster, Your Grace.” 

Third in the Ladies Most Scandalous series, this stars two characters that were introduced in the previous two books. An assistant to the other books heroines, Flora, and Duke of Langham, a friend to the other two heroes. Right away we learn that Flora is actually Poppy Delamare and she is on her way back home, the home she ran away from two years ago and changed her name to avoid a betrothal that her step-father had engaged her in. Poppy read in the paper that her step-sister Violet has been accused of murder, the murder of her husband and the man Poppy was supposed to marry. Feeling guilty that Violet had to marry the man in her place, Poppy wants to save Violet and prove that she didn't commit the murder. At the train station, she gets pick-pocketed and trying to chase the man down, runs into Langham, a man she's had a contentious relationship with. After losing her money, Langham, on the way home to his grandmother's birthday party, decides to help Poppy with the murder investigation, if she'll pose as his fiancee, saving him from the debutantes he knows his grandmother invited to her party. 

One of the reasons he was so amused by Miss Deaver, he realized, was that she didn’t treat him like he pissed gold. She gave him a hard time of it, and it was refreshing. 

I started the series here and didn't have a problem, there's obvious some emotional groundwork done already between Poppy and Langham in the previous two books but their courting and friendship is done here. Their situation is set-up in the first ten percent with them sharing confidences of how they're in the situations they need help in, basically the cards are on the table. This leaves room and time for them to simply be their true selves in each other's company. I liked this and thought this had the general tone of a Grace Burrowes, sweet babbling brook tone and pace, but I thought the murder mystery would have them actively Sherlock-ing more than they were. It took until around forty percent before the case actually gets going and we start to get sides of story of what happened and a couple clues in the tellings. Poppy's sister Violet is being kept away or disappeared for a lot of the story to keep some of the true story of what happened to her husband in the dark and there were some interesting red-herrings but I was missing Poppy and Langham more actively searching for clues. We do get one big scene of them trapped in cave and a, close to gruesome, danger element from a Lucifer's Society (think Hellfire Club) that could be involved in the murder. 

This arrangement with the duke wasn’t a game; it was a necessity for gaining her sister’s freedom, and she would do well to remember it. 

Our leads were given plot elements of family issues, Langham not as close to his younger brother as he'd like and Poppy's dislike of her step-father and how that affects her relationship with her mother and the obvious worry over her sister Violet but they didn't spend enough time with those characters or flesh out the issues to give those elements depth and thus, add layers to the characters for me. Poppy and Langham also had a more sweet friendship to growing love relationship for the majority of the story, so when they had their open (cave) door sex scene I didn't feel the passion between them as much as I would have liked; it felt a bit abrupt after how physically calm things were between them prior. 

There were, he realized suddenly, few things he wouldn’t do in order to make Poppy happy. 

The later last bit ramps things up with Violet appearing and revealing some information that eliminates and shines a brighter spotlight on some characters in regards to their guiltiness. We also get the previous two main couples making an appearance that I'm sure series readers will enjoy and a danger scene that has both Poppy and Langham realizing that time is too short not to go for the one you love. I thought the story took a while to get going, I wanted more Sherlock-ing, and the characters and elements had kind of a nothing new here feel but the friendship tone between Poppy and Langham was sweet.

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