Overall: 4.5 rounded to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥
Humor: Yes, a bit especially with their banter
Perspective: Third person from both the hero and heroine
Cliffhanger: No
Epilogue: The last chapter takes place 1 month in the future

Should I read in order?
It’s not totally necessary but I would suggest yes. You come into this story with the mains knowing each other and I felt like I was missing out a bit on their relationship from prior books.

Basic plot:
Poppy escaped her home years ago to avoid an unpleasant marriage, but upon hearing her sister is being accused of murder she returns to help prove her innocence. She runs into Joshua at the station and he agrees to help her if she pretends to be his bride-to-be to get his grandmother off his back.

Give this a try if you want:
- Victorian (1867)
- Buckinghamshire setting
- mystery to solve
- Duke hero
- secret identity (plays a small part)
- fake betrothal
- hero suffers from claustrophobia
- touch of class difference
- lower steam lovers – 1 full scene

Ages:
- Heroine is 25, didn’t catch hero

First line:
Violence, regrettably, was out of the question.

My thoughts:
I ended up really enjoying this mystery. Mysteries aren’t usually my favorite in romance because I want my characters focused on each other instead of something else – but in this one they did that! And spent almost all their time together which I really appreciated.

Collins’s writing really pulled me in on this one and I found this book a pleasure to read. Joshua and Poppy’s banter was endearing and funny. I liked that Poppy had a bit a of a prickly personality – I wouldn’t say it was sunshine and grump necessarily but it gave me a touch of those vibes – Joshua maybe enhanced Poppy’s grumpiness sometimes haha but them together just really felt like perfection.

I was a bit sad I didn’t read the first two books, only because it seemed like these characters already had their minds made up about each other from page 1 and I didn’t get to experience that. (I’m unsure how much page time they actually have together in the prior books)

I could have used a touch more steam, but I recall from reading her prior that I wasn’t going to get hot and heavy. The scene was lovely, but a touch light on explicitness and not super long.

Overall though I really enjoyed the story and writing, the characters were a delight, and it does make me want to try the first two books in this series!

Quotes/spoiler-y thoughts:

“Do friends do this?” she asked lightly, lifting her hand to his shoulder. From this angle, she could see a patch of whiskers, his valet must have missed when shaving him before dinner, and the site endeared him to her as no polished façade could have done. He was, despite his elevated title and great wealth, simply a man. The warmth of his body so near here told her as much.
“Our kinds of friends do,” he said, in a low voice that made her heart quicken. “We even do other things when we choose to.”
“Like what?” she whispered, hearing the tremble in her voice, but not caring.
“We kiss when we want to,” he said softly. “So, the real question, Poppy, is, do we want to?”
 

Content warnings:

- Mention of death of heroine’s father at a young age
- Abusive family
- Corrupt police
- Heroine is thrown down a cave and hurts her ankle and is taken by the villain
- Scenes of eating an animal heart

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

 
Safe sex? The hero pulls out
Pg 164 – kiss (for a distraction)
Pg 223 – kiss, fingering for her, her on top (virginity loss) while in a locked folly
Pg 325 kiss that leads to an implied scene
Total pages 325