Claim Now Aunt Dimity And The Duke (Aunt Dimity Mystery, #2) Created By Nancy Atherton Displayed As Digital Format

enjoyed this book, even though it was off to a bit of a slow start, I hadn't realized that each book in the series featured new characters, so at first I was a tad confused about how everyone fit.
However, once Emma arrived at Penford Hall it really picked up, The descriptions are so beautifully written and now I wish I could visit the grounds and gardens Especially the ruins of the Hall.
The characters were interesting and I was excited to follow the daily living in an old home like this.
I have to say, the mystery was pretty light there wasn't a lot of typical "investigating", BUT there were many secrets to be discovered and when the largest one was revealed and laid out for Emma wow I was blown away.
What a creative piece of the story and at that point I could not put it down.
I wish we saw more of Aunt Dimity in this one, though the casual mentions of her did add to her mystique.
I'm a sucker for a happy ending, so I really enjoyed how this was put together and I can't wait to read more in this series.
The second book in the Aunt Dimity series, however in this book Aunt Dimity seemed to be more of an afterthought than a key figure.
If I hadn't read the first book, I'd have no idea who Aunt Dimity was, Even having read the first one, I wasn't sure exactly how she fit into this story, I think I liked the first book better, I'm starting the third one in the series and have found connections to the first book and it's characters, which I like.

This book was a fun quick read, but I felt that sometimes things happened too quickly without adequate development.

Whoops! I am farther into the third book and now realize that the second book is about some characters from the first book, however the second book actually took place prior to the first book.
So if your memory isn't good and you don't read them one right after the other, you could get confused, the way I did.
I take my writing seriously and consider comments the reward, Please do not leave “like button” clicks, until you are accompanying them with remarks for me,

Nancy Atherton débuted inand by the beauty of used books, I recently discovered "Aunt Dimity's Death".
Im in love with Nancy's originality, impeccable writing, and series that resembles nothing else! Thirty yearold Lori was financially low and her mother had died.
When a lawyer's letter came about a Dimity Woodcock's death, she was astonished that fairytales she grew up with, were about her mother's real friend in wartime England.
Assisted by the lawyer's son Bill, there's a mission to fulfill at Dimity's cottage.
Wonderful neighbours in Finch, warn that it is haunted,

Books are too often undercut with the claim "It wasnt what I thought".
One should base reviews on whatever a title turned out to be! In novel"Aunt Dimity And The Duke", were shown a cast elsewhere in England, which must take place aboutyears earlier, while Dimity Woodcock is alive.
She is scarcely incorporated except as a caring figure who knew duke Grayson's Grandma, The sole familiar figures are the Pym sisters but youre drawn into such an ingenious concept with superb characterization you dig right in.
It isn't a leap to consider we influence other people, Not since David Eddings have I seen another author unfurl an offbeat story so well.


American computer analyst, Emma is free of a stagnant, heavy metal boyfriend and tours England.
At Penford Hall where a disreputable musician died, shes hired to restore the garden of Grayson's Grandma in time for a festival.
A myth is supposed to rematerialize atyear intervals, Englishman Derek is hired to locate the legend's artifact, If Im correct, it occurred to me early on that Emma amp Derek become Loris neighbours in Finch! This author isn't conjuring angles willy nilly.
Shes the best of the best and her books are unforgettable, This was mainly just a romance, very little mystery This is a good solid cozy type mystery that is not syrupy or formulaic.
Well the romance is but not the mystery element, There is also a paranormal element, but it is so unobtrusive, that I was able to pass its appearance off as mere coincidence.


There are some passages which brought me out of the story because of its dated times.
For example: The protagonist remarks to herself that it is odd that household staff would be carrying tetherless telephones, affordable only by the rich.
The book was written in, the year that digital cordless phones were introduced,

On reflection it was amusing to consider how advanced our technology has become in just these couple of decades.
AND of course, how outdated we will be in justourselves,

A step above the usual cozy, I thoroughly enjoyed sitelinkAunt Dimity and the Duke, the denouement never to have been deduced by any reader.
It wasn't awful, but it wasn't very good either, Aunt Dimity gets referred to a lot but is mostly off stage with no explanation of who she is.
It seemed a very labor intensive way of setting up neighbors for Lori and family who know of Aunt Dimity.
The romance was pretty forced, Jilted American independent woman computer expert and garden lover, Emma goes to England to look at gardens, gets sent by twin Pym sisters to a specific location where she finds mysteries and of course, love.
If I had read the description first, I doubt I'd have wasted my money buying it, Well, I'll donate to the library and get a tax write off, I'm still willing to keep going on this series since I know there were many I loved but I will be pretty reluctant to buy more of the series.
Another quaint mystery by Nancy Atherton, Aunt Dimity has a way of tying a good yarn up in a nice neat magical bow! I can't believe it took me until the Epilogue to recall who Derek and Emma were.
This endeared the series to me even more as I reflected back on the part those characters played in the first novel, which actually takes place after "Aunt Dimity and the Duke".
I will definitely continue to read more of the series,

This book made me long for the days when I would sit on the floor in the hall outside my son and daughter's bedrooms while reading "chapter books" to them as a nightly bedtime story! I beleive Aunt Dimity would have been a perfect choice for reading! Another very cute light mystery, really not much mystery but a figuring out of a few things, both mysteries and love life.

Easy, sweet, silly "mysteries" that end nicely, this one seems a prequel story at least in timeline to book, Emma ist gerade frisch getrennt und reist nach Südengland, um sich eine Auszeit zu nehmen, Sie liebt Gärten und möchte sich in Cornwall einige besonders schöne Gartenlandschaften ansehen, Sie landet in Penford Hall, einem alten Schloss in Cornwall, Dort wird sie kurzerhand als Gärtnerin eingestellt, Ein Missverständnis, denkt Emma, doch Tante Dimity hatte ihre Hände im Spiel, Und dann ist Emma auch schon mittendrin in einem alten Geheimnis um eine verschwundene Zauberlaterne, . .

Mein Leseeindruck:

Ein ganz wunderbares Buch! Ich habe mich total hineinfallen lassen können in diese zauberhafte und rätselhafte Geschichte, die eine unvergleichliche Wohlfühlatmosphäre aufbaut.


Und obwohl die Geschichte einfach schön ist, ist sie zugleich auch mysteriös und spannend, wenn auch auf eine ruhige Art.


Mir hat es unglaublich viel Spaß gemacht, dieses Buch zu lesen und Emma in Cornwall zu begleiten.
Alle Figuren habe ich direkt ins Herz schließen können man muss sich hier einfach wohlfühlen.


Ich freue mich sehr, dass ich noch einige TanteDimityBücher vor mir habe!
An extremely clever and intricate Aunt Dimity mystery.
The cast of characters is big, but they all fit beautifully into the story, Nancy Atherton's Aunt Dimity and the Duke is a well written cozy mystery with a bit of the supernatural.
At, Emma has a successful job in computers in Boston, Massachusetts, her own apartment and an independent life.
So when her longtime partner, Richard, dumps her to marry a much younger woman, she isn't anywhere near as upset as her mother.
Emma is content to go on her English garden tour vacation solo thank you very much, While touring a hedge maze, she discovers a pair of elderly twins knitting in the center, After striking up a conversation, they direct her to visit Penford Hall, home of their friend, Grayson Alexander, the Duke of Penford.
At Penford Hall, Emma is caught up in a whirlwind of assumptions she doesn't quite understand, It seems she's expected to restore the chapel garden at Penford Hall by the August fete, While restoring the garden is no easy task, Emma becomes intrigued by the lives of her new friends and housemates, especially the handsome heritage restoration specialist, Derek and his two children.
Derek is on hand supposedly to restore the ruin of a castle yet the castle seems fine and to repair a stained glass window depicting a local legend.
It seems he's really there to search out a mythical lantern that will save the Penford estate and the family.
The press are after Grayson to spill about the mysterious death of rock star Lex Rex at the Penford estate.
The vultures are circling and Grayson's cousin Susanna means to cause trouble, Meanwhile, hisyearoldson Peter is mother to little Nell, Derek'syearolddaughter, Derek is still mourning the loss of his wife and has thrown himself into his work, Peter knows what the restoration of the lady in the window will mean and it's about time for heis so tired.
Can Emma help solve the mystery of the missing lantern and solve everyone's problems

This isn't your average cozy mystery.
It's more of a romance with mystery than the other way around, This story is a prequel to sitelinkAunt Dimity's Death and shows how Emma and Derek Harris became a couple.
Then in Chapter, it becomes more of a mystery and I got really caught up in that.
I never guessed any of the reveals, I was quite shocked and had to keep reading, I felt let down when all was revealed, fully expecting MORE to the story, With an hour left on the audiobook, I thought surely there was one more twist to come.
The rest of the book wraps up the "cozy" plot, There's a very slight maybe paranormal element to the story and normally I don't like that sort of thing but it felt right for Cornwall and by the end, I liked the way it was handled.
A few of the references date the story slightly, like mainframe computers, and a mention of being a postwar refugee but they're barely noticable.


The audiobook narrator is dreadful and no one in my book club who listened to the book liked her.
She's American and really doesn't know how to do different English accents, Her prim and proper accent is OK but she uses the same voice and accent for more than one character and I got confused.
The rest of the accents range from Yorkshire to Cockney but not Cornish! The staff are supposed to be from the village and some of the named minor characters clearly come from old Cornish families.
The story did give me the feel of being written by an American with superficial knowledge of British culture and the narrator's lack of accuracy added to that.
It makes some sense though because the main character is American so if she were to narrate her own story, it might sound like this.


I loved Emma and Derek when we first met in ADD, They seemed like such a lovely couple and a great little family with two wonderful kids they love very much.
I was surprised when I read the description of this book but releaved that it tells Emma and Derek's backstory.
Aunt Dimity is still alive but in the background, She's in the prologue and then mentioned a few times, At this point, Emma doesn't know who Aunt Dimity is and is very confused when everyone keeps mentioning her.
Aunt Dimity works her magic behindthescenes to get the Pym sisters to meet Emma and send Emma to Penford.
I think Aunt Dimity sent Derek there as well, Matchmaking

I appreciate Emma being an older and more frumpy character but not that her longtime partner left her to marry a younger woman.
I do like how pragmatic she is about it and how indpeendent she has been, She doesn't NEED a man, She doesn't WANT to fall in love and get married, She's content with her career, That's a refreshingly different plot trope, I also liked watching Emma fall in love with the children, Peter and Nell are precocious moppets of the sort I normally can't stand but I have an affinity for Nell because her teddy, Bertie gifted to her by Aunt Dimity, of course, is very real to her.
He sees all and knows all and Nell speaks for Bertie, Peter is an old soul for, He's overburdened by missing his mother, school work, housework and caring for his little sister, He's taken on all the adult responsibilities and now his dad wants Peter to go to boarding school.
Peter is tired but worried about who will do the work if he goes away and how will he fit in when he hasn't had the childhood other boys have Emma's heart goes out to these charming children and she falls in love with them.
Even though she claims she fell in love with Derek at first sight, I think it's a very Sound of Music plot trope where she loves the children, the children scheme and eventually the adults fall in love.


Derek is a good guy, he's just lost in his own concerns, He's busy trying to earn an independent living and not have to rely on his father, an Earl, for help and that keeps Derek busy but away from home.
Thus Derek is ignorant of what is happening or not happening in his own household, He trusts his instincts and his children to know if anything was wrong, Big mistake. He doesn't actually talk to the kids and find out how they're doing, It, of course, takes Emma to make him see what's been going on, "Love them, captain, love them all!" Their romance is a kind of slow burn, Non romance readers will see this as instalove but it isn't really, at least not compared to romance novels.
Emma and Derek work together to solve the mystery of Penford and get to know each other better that way.
She knows him a little better than he knows her because of her friendship with the children.
Maybe a little more getting to know one another before the epilogue would have been nice, Hopefully that happened off page,

There are a ton of secondary characters, I'm working from memory so I don't know if I'll remember them all, Grayson seems nice. He was a lonely little boy who loved his grandmother and when she died, his world fell apart.
He knew Aunt Dimity and she cared for him, I trust her yet I'm not sure I fully trust Grayson, He's kind, friendly and welcoming to strangers yet he can be a bit arrogant and cold at times.
Maybe even clueless. One thing is for certainhe LOVES his birthright and would do anything to protect it, Did he orchestrate the death of Lex Rex Did he steal Lex Rex's money to repair his crumbling estate His cousin, Susannah AshleyWoods, aka Asher's English Rose, a famous model, is staying at Penford.
She's a mean girl type determined to put Emma down at every opportunity, Grayson does nothing to check his cousin's behavior or threaten to kick her out, I think Susannah wants to marry Grayson but sees Emma as a potential threat, I think she's the type to see all women as threats, especially as she's aging, She brings along her manager, Sid, from Brooklyn, with a dreadful stereotypical accent I'm not even sure that's a Brooklyn accent.
Sid is a funny guy, He sees all, is very wise and probably a potential murderer, I don't trust him at all, He seems kind of shady to me, What's he doing there if his client is only visiting her cousin Doesn't he have other clients Is he trying to get in good with her so she'll keep him around

The staff include the tarttongued Nanny Cole, voiced in a faux Cockney accent.
She's always yelling at everyone and is tough as old boots, Once I got to know her, I saw she means well but I don't really like her much.
She's terrifying. I think she may have something to do with the big event that happens in Chapter, Nanny Cole is the resident seamstress who magically whips up the perfect clothes for everyone that just so happen to fit perfectly.
LOL! Her daughter, Kate, is Grayson's PR agent, more or less, She deals with all the problems that arise from the death of Lex Rex in a boating accent on the estate.
Even though Grayson wasn't there at the time, the press still think he is guilty of murder.
Kate is harried and long suffering, She has a tough job and on top of that, has to live in this castle with her mother.
Mattie, a maid, worships Susanna and is eager to gossip about celebrities and what happened when Lex Rex died, even though she didn't come to work there until later.


There a bunch of other staff I can't keep straight, There's Newland, Bantry and Gash, Bantry, the gardener is affable and happy to let Emma redo the chapel garden, He was browbeaten by the Pym sisters I guess and didn't get a choice in the matter.
I find him rather suspicious though, He seems to have been in the right place at the right time to perhaps attempt murder.
Or at least his tools are, Gash, the mechanic, is fun and friendly, Yet, he's a mechanic. Does he do boats as well as cars Could he have had a hand in Lex Rex's death Newland is the gate keeper, very taciturn and doesn't involve himself in the goingson in the Hall.
There's also Madama, the silent cook who dishes up the most deletcable meals,

This is a charming series for readers of escapist literature, Don't think too hard about it and it's not all that memorable but enjoyable while it lasts.
I look forward to next month's read, .