Aunt Dimity and the Duke

Emma Porter has just been jilted by her boyfriend of 15 years; it is lucky that she had previously planned a trip to England to visit some special gardens, a treat for the talented amateur gardener. Once there, she finds herself invited by elderly twin sisters to a residence in Cornwall, which happens to be a stately home owned by a Duke. The Duke assumes that she is there to replant a badly neglected garden, which needs to be set to rights within a few months in order to carry out a special fete that celebrates a legend of the house; there is also a builder, Derek Harris with his two young children, who is to restore a stained glass window in the lady chapel for the same purpose. When tragedy strikes, it is up to these disparate show more people, among others, to come together and save the day….Aunt Dimity is a ghostly presence in this story, although apparently not yet an actual ghost; this is the second of the Aunt Dimity books and essentially gives the backstory of Emma and Derek, who feature in the first book set some 10 or 15 years later. Again, I liked the characters, but the emphasis on romance means that these books are not for me. I’m glad to have read the first two, which together give the framework of the series, but I won’t move on with the series as it’s not a genre I enjoy. Fans of romance novels will like it, though, so recommended for them, just not for me. show less

Let's just start by writing that I love this book. The mystery is more of a behind-the-scenes story compared to the discovery of the characters' true selves. This book chronologically predates the first book in the series, Aunt Dimity's Death, but you don't have to read that one before this one. I love that the main female character isn't young, fashionably slim, and beautiful. She's in her 40s, a bit frumpy, and an avid gardener. She's also recovering after being dumped by her longtime lover.

There was a good amount of musing about marriage that I enjoyed, but mostly I loved watching the characters grow. The mystery was solved, and I was pleased with the results.

I highly recommend this book for fans of cozy mysteries.

Emma, forty-something and newly single, travels to England to tour noteworthy gardens -- but a chance encounter with a set of elderly twins in a hedge maze sends her on a different course, designing a chapel garden for the Duke of Penford. The duke's estate is populated by a cast of quirky characters, including the charismatic duke himself, a variety of eccentric servants, a bad-tempered fashion model and distant relative to the duke along with her agent, and a widowed restoration specialist and his young children. When the fashion model is involved in an accident that nearly results in her death, Emma is left wondering if the duke might be hiding some terrible secret. Who can she trust?

I read the first Aunt Dimity book a couple years show more ago, and while I found it pleasant enough, I didn't like it enough to seek out the rest of the series. But when the rest of the series practically fell in my lap (passed along from a friend to a relative to me) I picked it up, looking for a pleasant light read on a weekend vacation. And that's precisely what this book is. The mystery is gentle even for the cozy genre, and the focus is much more on the relationships between characters and the slightest touch of paranormal activity than on murder or attempted murder. I wouldn't really recommend this to hardcore murder mystery fans, but for readers looking for a comforting read with gardens and aristocracy, plus a hint of mystery and a touch of romance, this is just the thing. And, since it does not share major characters with the first Aunt Dimity book, it can be read as a stand-alone if one so desires. show less

Fun, as always. Aunt Dimity was nearly as mysterious when she was alive as in the rest of the series. It's nice to meet Emma and Derek, and Peter and Nell; the mystery (mysteries) are weirdly contrived. The secret of Lex Rex is highly amusing. There's a lot of unlikely events, and wild suppositions that are - well, less unlikely than the truth, in several cases. And absolutely no explanation of the cape, let alone the lantern. Ah well. Very enjoyable, I like this as well as I do the first Aunt Dimity (and much better than most of the rest, which got quite formulaic). Glad I found it at the sale. It's fluff, but well-done fluff.

"Aunt Dimity and the Duke" begins with a young boy running away from Penford Hall in tears after learning that his father, the current Duke of Penford, has somehow managed to bring the Hall almost to the brink of ruin. He's selling off valuable family items and possibly the Hall itself, and young Grayson can no longer stand by and watch it happen. Trying to hide in the Chapel Garden, he runs into his Aunt Dimity, who comforts him by re-telling the story of the lady in the stained glass window overseeing the Chapel Garden. He remembers the tale of love overcoming the impossible and the magical light from the lantern she carried to light her lover's way home. The lantern has someone gone missing, which infuriates the current Duke to no show more end considering how valuable it was.

Fast forward 20 years, and Bostonian Emma Porter is taking a vacation to travel the magnificent gardens in England. And it couldn't have happened at a better time: her boyfriend of 15 years finally decided to tie the knot -- with another, much younger woman. With too much work getting on her nerves and now the added pressure of listening to her family go on and on about how bad her former boyfriend is, spending the summer among flowers and plants, far from Boston, is a dream come true. And she begins to relax and enjoy herself, especially when she goes out of her way to find a seldom-visited garden and stumbles across the 90-year-old Prym twins enjoying tea. After a long and wonderful discussion of gardens, they suggest she visit the manor house at Penford Hall, and she gladly accepts their card of introduction.

But once she reaches the manor house, things take a strange turn. Thanks to the Prym sister's card, Grayson -- now the Duke -- believes she's been sent to set the crumbling Chapel Garden to rights and after much coaxing and assurances from the Duke, she reluctantly accepts the task and soon finds herself entangled in a search for the mystical lamp as well as the truth behind a violent attack on the Duke's cousin and what connection that has to the death of a rockstar aboard the Duke's yacht a few years prior.

"Aunt Dimity and the Duke" was a good page-turner, and I found that once I started reading, I couldn't put it down until I finished. Some fine twists and sleuthing skills mixed with a touch of the magical/mystical made this a fun read, and I certainly enjoyed following Emma around, as perplexed as she was about the garden, as caught up in the mystery as she was. I did wonder, though, about Aunt Dimity as she appears during the prologue and then in name only through the remainder of the book so I don't know that calling the book "Aunt Dimity and the Duke" is apt. But that's a very minor point as I thoroughly enjoyed the story. show less

Emma Porter, computer analyst and amateur gardener, is thrown over by her long time boyfriend. She decides to revamp their planned summer vacation to England into a trip to visit some of the most well known gardens there. At 40, plain and overweight she decides the trip to pursue her passion and get away from gossip is perfect. But things go awry. A chance meeting with a pair of eccentric twin old ladies gets her admission to a private chapel garden and an offer to take over its restoration. Before she knows she is designing and digging. Also drawn into the Duke's web is a restoration expert asked to fix a stained glass window that doesn't need repair. It seems the Duke wants him to locate a lantern that is a significant piece of local show more legend. He is staying there with his 2 children. When a distant cousin to the Duke is seriously injured while looking into the suspicious death of a rock star who drowned near the estate 5 years earlier, Derek and Emma try to figure out what is going on. Aunt Dimity is a peripheral character who is the source of several coincidences and gives a supernatural element to the story. A nice cozy mystery with a bit of romance. show less

I actually liked this one better than the first. I thought the characters were better-drawn and were more real to me. The story was intriguing with just enough of the paranormal to not get weird. Emma as the lead role in this story was so much more believable than Lori in the first book, Aunt Dimity's Death. I found her to be introspective, sincere, and appropriately emotional. The love between Derek and Emma was predictable but that did not stop the flow of satisfaction once it occurred. The supporting characters were fun and I hope to see them in the upcoming installments of this delightful cozy mystery series.

Recommended.