A great Veronica Speedwell book! I feel like the author gets more comfortable writing for these characters with each book.. I initially decided not to buy these for my library as I felt that the characters were too modern to seem realistic and I thought my library's patrons would not care for them as much as they do for Lady Julia Grey.
I now regret that decision. Veronica's attitude and Stoker's curmudgeonliness are a big part of these books' appeal. Situating these characters as scientists at the cusp on the scientific age makes things very interesting.

I will make sure to order all these books so my patrons can get up to speed before this volume is published!

Yeah! Another great book in this series! Of course, a fantastic mystery, but also, more time with these characters that have become very dear! While there's only 1 more book right now on contract as far as I know, hopefully more will be added, because that would be excellent!

I kinda don't know where the title came from. Maybe from Veronica and Stoker working with Tiberius on the mystery of Rosamund. Because that is dangerous. But I'm not quite sure. But that might just be the weirdness in my head wanting that.

So this book picks up pretty quickly after A Treacherous Curse, and then it skips a bunch of time. Which given the emotions that both Veronica and Stoker were dealing with in A Treacherous Curse, well, you can guess what they did with that break, and you have a 50% chance of guessing right!

We got to learn a lot about this island and a number of the people on it. There's some complicated relationships with some of the Romilly family, which muddies the water in the investigation. But that ending, yeah, it was pretty tense!

This book was so fantastic, and I enjoyed it so freaking much! Can't wait for the next book, and then I hope we get more books after that! Because it would be great if this series was continued!

A Dangerous Collaboration (March 2019)
By Deanna Raybourn
Berkley/Penguin, 336 pages.
★★★★

When 19th century activists and writers began to discuss the "New Woman," I doubt that Deanna Raybourn's Veronica Speedwell was quite what they had in mind. Lucky for us. Raybourn's creation is a wonderful combination of fierce determination, pigheadedness, insight, and pluckiness. The New Woman was known for her independence and willingness to defy convention, but I don't know of any who secreted throwing knives in their corsets, were unabashedly carnal, were the "semi-legitimate" offspring of the notoriously randy Duke of Wales, or combined careers in lepidoptery (butterfly studies) and amateur sleuthing.

Everything about Veronica Speedwell is cheeky. Her name is also that of a spiky purple flower that looks a bit like loosestrife, and her partner in adventure is Revelstoke Templeton-Vane, who goes by the handle of "Stoker." One of the first literary figures to write the New Woman into his novels was Bram Stoker. Veronica and Stoker are not exactly lovers–he's recovering from a disastrous marriage–but Speedwell isn't a virgin and she wouldn't exactly kick Stoker out of her bed, or his brother either. In fact, controlling her animal instincts is an ongoing struggle as there's only so much Victorian society will countenance, even from its outliers.

The fourth installment of Raybourn's Veronica Speedwell series is set in 1888, when Jack the Ripper is loose in London. But Veronica's attentions are directed elsewhere–off the coast of Cornwall to be precise. Stoker's brother, Lord Tiberius Templeton-Vane, puts forth an offer Veronica can't refuse: come with him on a short outing to St. Maddern's island, where a rare butterfly exists. There are odd extenuating circumstances. Ostensibly Tiberius is going to cheer up an old friend, Malcolm Romilly, whose lordship of an ancient castle has suffered because of his grief. Because the Romilly family is Catholic, Tiberius and Veronica must pose as affianced. The chance of seeing a butterfly thought to be extinct is lure enough for Veronica, though Stoker suspects it's just a ruse on his brother's part to seduce her. She reminds him in no uncertain terms–and our Ms. Speedwell isn't one to mince words–that she's 26, has no desire to be anyone's doormat or wife, and can take care of herself. Stoker, though, despises his brother, whom he sees as a scheming and amoral aristocrat. A sample of their mutual vitriol–Tiberius: "Peace, brother mine. I can feel you cursing me." Stoker: "And yet you still breathe…. I must be doing something wrong."

Stoker will also journey to St. Maddern's and there, things are odder still. Malcolm desires help is solving a mystery that has reduced him to melancholic torpor. It is the third anniversary of the disappearance of Rosamund, who vanished on the day she and Malcolm were to be wed. What happened? Did she flee? Was she kidnapped? Murdered? No one comes or goes from St. Maddern's in secret, so where is Rosamund? As another detective was fond of saying, the game is afoot.

Without revealing anything, let's just say that truth will follow a very crooked path. The castle cast also includes Malcolm's reclusive sister Mertensia, who is happy only when tending the castle's extensive grounds, including a poison garden; Malcolm's widowed sister-in-law Helen, who is a medium who proposes to contact Rosamund in the spirit world; her 19-year-old spoiled brat of a son, Caspian; and a full household staff commanded by Mrs. Trengrouse, who has been at the castle since Malcolm was a lad. There is also a village full of eccentrics and fishermen, not to mention the bickering brothers, and various motives that are seldom what they purport to be.

You might want to get the digital version of this book so you have one-finger access to the built-in dictionary. Ms. Raybourn has an exceptionally large vocabulary that is replete with now-archaic Victorian terms. She also has a puckish wit, such a description of a large castle fireplace "the sort for roasting half an ox or an annoying child." Raybourn engages in subtle gender inversion, such as making Veronica more rational, decisive, and sexually aroused than the men. I suppose some might complain that Veronica is too thoroughly modern at times, but it is a novel after all, not a work of history. If there is a weakness, it is that once the mystery is unveiled, what occurs next is telegraphed and predictable. I didn't care. I ripped through this book in two sittings and felt refreshed to indulge in the wit and passions of Veronica Speedwell, a Victorian for our times.

Rob Weir

Love this series, smart intelligent characters with great dialogue and Inalways learn something new.
Can't wait for the next book.

In the fourth installment, Veronica Speedwell travels as Lord Templeton
-Vine as his fiancee to a remote island of the coast of Cornish owned by his best friend, Malcolm Romilly. He has promised her the larvae of a rare butterfly. Striker joins the house party. Malcolm has an alternate goal, he wants to find what happened to his bride who vanished on their wedding day three years ago. The island has many stories of ghosts and fantasy. The romance between Stroker and Veronica is moving right along as there several twists to the storyline that will keep you turning pages. What happened to the missing bride? Will the Templeton-vines survive this journey. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK AND SERIES.

Disclosure: Many thanks to NetGalley and Berkley for a review copy. The opinions expressed are my own.

oh goodness gracious, this just might be my favourite in the series so far! not just for obvious reasons - if you read it and love veronica and stoker as much as i do, you know what i mean - but because it was fantastically written and i was super into the mystery part too. in the other books, the characters were the highlight for me and i couldn't wait to get back to veronica and stoker and try to smoosh them together. in this one, i was so into the book that when we did get snippets and lovely things, it was a nice surprise! as usual, i was surprised by the bad guy and i thought it was all very well done. when i first discovered this series, it was when the 3rd was on netgalley, so i read 1, 2 and 3 in quick succession. i don't know where i got it in my head that it was a trilogy, but i was so bummed when i realised it wasn't! i hate waiting and my memory is absolutely shocking, so having to wait for books in a series rarely works out well for me. i read the 3rd book in january and it is now december, so i was worried considering i've forgotten books i read 2 months ago. however, in the case of this particular series, i had absolutely no issue. i think it's the way the books are written and the nature of the stories - new mystery each book with the only thing really going from book to book is veronica and stoker's relationship, and don't worry, my memory is not going to forget them any time soon. now, can we have the 5th book?! i am SO EXCITED and cannot wait.

It's always a bittersweet reader's dilemma to want to race through a book to get to the end and to want to prolong such a good book for as long as possible. This fourth installment in the Veronica Speedwell series is a winner for me from start to finish, but now the wait begins for the fifth (and final?) book in the series in 2020. Right now, that seems terribly far away.

_A Dangerous Collaboration_ picks right up where _A Treacherous Curse_ ends with Veronica and Stoker pondering their possible future together as more than just friends and sleuthing partners. Veronica is feeling edgy though and unsure of her emotions and so she wants time away from Stoker to get a firm grasp on what her romantic feelings will mean for her life. As a lifelong footloose and fancy free woman, she is suddenly faced with dreams of permanence and commitment with one man. Stoker is more secure in his feelings and therefore the more emotionally stable of the two, but Veronica's slipperiness does lead him to feel the need to play games with her to get her to realize that she can't live without him. Thus, nearly the entire book is filled with romantic push and pull, with intense sexual tension interspersed with their trademark banter and one-upmanship. It's all so much fun to read, especially for those who like slow burn romances. And the ending is just swoon worthy with enough left unsaid and unrealized that Book 5 is seriously anticipated.

Happily, the mystery here is nearly as gripping as the romance and perhaps my favorite of the series, though I am a fan of _A Perilous Undertaking_. Here, a dinner party in a castle on a secluded island off the coast of Cornwall brings to mind Du Maurier's _Rebecca_, as Veronica and Stoker race to solve the mystery of a missing wife amidst a group of suspects, all with secret motivations. Tiberius, Stoker's older brother, plays a significant role too as a possible suspect, and is in his own right a fascinating and complex character who I hope reemerges in the next book. Of particular delight, the setting is just wonderful, featuring a poison garden, an island teeming with clear-winged butterflies, a castle built around secret passages, and a village of eccentric villagers - some of whom may or may not be actual witches and mermaids. It was fun to see Veronica, the pragmatic scientist, get caught up in the lore.

The best thing about this entire series has been the development of a loving friendship between Veronica and Stoker. Both are independent outcasts of society and skeptics of conventional institutions like marriage. It's hard to imagine a different life partner for either of them aside from each other, and the books all do a fabulous job of showing how important trust and respect is as a foundation to love. I had some slight misgivings in the first book that Veronica was too brash and too much of a caricature to be a satisfying protagonist, but she has grown steadily on me. In this fourth book, she is nuanced and her iconoclastic beliefs feel more believable because of her complexities as a character.

Onward to the fifth book, which sounds frankly thrilling as Veronica and Stoker get pulled into the mysterious Whitechapel murders of prostitutes and an unknown serial killer. How will Veronica and Stoker handle Jack the Ripper?

Oh, Veronica Speedwell, you fill the Amelia Peabody-sized hole in my heart.

I love these books. I love the characters, the mysteries, the settings, all of it. I will trust you to read the blurb on your own, and will highlight some of the things I particularly liked about this book.

*The Setting - Veronica, Stoker, and Lord Templeton-Vane venture away from London and to a remote island off the coast of Cornwall. The island is an estate, complete with its own small village, colorful inhabitants, and mystery. It has a very Christie-esque feel to it.

*The Characters - I have ever admired Veronica Speedwell as a woman of open-mindedness and nontraditional thinking. She is matter-of-fact, practical, and slightly scandalous. It's marvelous. And Stoker is her equal in most every way. He appreciates her in ways men didn't appreciate women at that time - for her independence, her brilliance, her sense of adventure. And we learn LOADS more about Tiberius Templeton-Vane that we didn't know before.

*The Mystery - It was very classic - a woman gone missing on her wedding day, disappeared without a trace and with no explanation. There is a classic list of suspects, all with their own motives, and each with a stake in either finding the missing woman or not. However, there is nothing cliche about the book, and it kept me guessing right up until the very end.

I will read every entry of this series without fail.

With each new V.Speedwell book I keep thinking that it could not possibly get any better, and with each brand new addition I'm so very happily proven wrong! Raybourn's 4th installment will not disappoint!

A Dangerous Collaboration is the 4th book in Deanna Raybourn's Veronica Speedwell mystery series. I have thoroughly enjoyed every book in this series so far and this one is no exception. In this installment we got some very satisfying development in the relationship between Veronica and Stoker which I was very pleased to see. We also get to learn a great deal about Stoker's brother Tiberius. He becomes a well developed and well rounded character who I hope to see more of in the future. The mystery was also very engaging and interesting and oh, the setting! An old castle and an insular, superstitious island community in Cornwall? Yes, Please! My one qualm stems from what I feel is an inconsistency in the way Veronica reacts to a particular situation. I don't feel it is true to the Veronica that we have come to know and love up to this point. Because of all of the other wonderful in this book I am able to overlook that inconsistency however if there were failings in other elements of the story I would be less able to overlook it because it was rather jarring. All in all this is a great book and if you have made it this far in the series I don't think you'll find much to fault here. I look forward to Veronica and Stoker's future adventures.

So excited that I was approved for an ARC provided by Penguin House via NetGalley for an honest review. I absolutely love this series and hope the next one comes out before too long. The cat and mouse game that goes on between Stoker and Veronica is so intriguing. Will they ever get it together? The mystery in itself was very good and I was spending a lot of time with the book and letting other things go by the wayside. I love the way Ms. Raybourn describes the small island that they have made their way to, the castle that has been transformed throughout the years and I absolutely was intrigued with the Poison garden that was there. If you like a victorian mystery with characters that can hold their own, this is a series for you.

Review based on a digital ARC received via Netgalley.

In this fourth installment of the Veronica Speedwell series, Veronica heads to Cornwall in the hopes of gathering a rare butterfly specimen for her collection. Of course, what awaits her there is more than a butterfly, but a three-year-old mystery involving the disappearance of a bride on her wedding day. On this island steeped in lore, the question of what happened` to the bride is met with superstition and intrigue – and a castle filled with hidden passageways, secret chambers and a somewhat moody lord. Into this mystery step Veronica, Stoker and Stoker’s brother, who each have their own reason for getting to the bottom of the disappearance. As the story starts to unfold, tensions mount within the castle and between the brothers, leading to some explosive scenes.

While the mystery is not terribly complicated, I found myself truly enjoying the story and the characters – the setting is quite atmospheric, as well. Veronica and Stoker continue their trademark banter as they work together to reach a resolution to the story. I was a little sad to see that this is the last in the series, although it came to a satisfying conclusion.

This is another Veronica Speedwell mystery. This is a very well written series with likable characters who are always in the thick of things. This time Miss Speedwell is invited to go to an island where a very rare species of Glasswing butterflies are and to possible bring some larvae back to her butterfly garden. She is invited under the ruse that she is Stoker's brother's fiance, which really doesn't sit well with Stoker. Turns out the whole trip is somewhat of a hidden agenda all around as the host hopes that the group will help him find out what happened to his bride who disappeared on their wedding day three years earlier.
This was and enjoyable read. I will look forward to more adventures in this series.

Veronica and Stoker unite with Stoker's older brother Tiberius to visit a castle on a Cornish island in Book 4 of the Veronica Speedwell mystery series. Tiberius tempts Veronica to join him on a trip to visit an old friend with promises of rare glasswing butterfly larvae for her vivarium. Veronica and Stoker, still wary of one another after wounded pride and many romantic near misses, join him. Once there, it's clear that their host, Malcolm Romilly, has secret plans for them, namely to help him discover what happened to his bride Rosamund, who suddenly disappeared on their wedding day three years before. Everyone assumes she left of her own volition until Malcolm reveals a moldy carpet bag carrying Rosamund's most treasured possessions. Once murder seems a likely possibility, Veronica and Stoker are quick to learn that many at the castle had good reason to see Rosamund eliminated. 

What struck me most about this installment is the many different ways women in this book had struggled to make a life for themselves in a male-dominated world: an impoverished widow who sold her soul to eat, an aging housekeeper who had given her entire life in service to a family, a lonely, maiden sister who is betrayed after offering kindness. As I've said before, Ms. Raybourn is spectacular at creating deep characters, even those that play only minor roles in her novels. Veronica's sparkle may seem diminished in these later books - the inevitable outcome of the highs and lows of life - but the other strong female characters we meet along the way ensure it is never a dull journey. Readers of my review of the 3rd Veronica Speedwell mystery, might remember my impatience with the overly protracted, long-stifled romantic sparks that have flown between Veronica and Stoker, and Veronica fans will not be disappointed this time around. It feels like Veronica and Stoker are maturing, so the fireworks are fewer but real gems appear in unlikely places.

I've been a fan of Deanna Raybourn since her Lady Julia Gray series. She is a fantastic storyteller and this was no disappointment. I devoured this latest Victoria Speedwell mystery, I think it was my favorite so far. The mystery was intriguing, complete with a creepy castle, terrible weather, seances and romance. The chemistry between the characters was brilliantly done. I loved every minute of this book and the only sad thing is, now I have to wait even longer for the next one! I think I will read anything Deanna Raybourn writes and love it.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Retains the fun and fast clip of the previous entries in the series while dialing up the heroine's introspection of her relationship to her faithful, dashing sidekick, Stoker. The mystery aspect is not the most thrilling, but its setting on a remote, mist covered island off the coast of England is very appealing and the details of Stoker's estranged brother Tiberius's tale of woe land well. Most importantly though, Veronica continues to enchant!

An excellent work of Victorian fiction, and a fine addition to the series. This book finds Veronica and Stoker on an island off the coast of England with Stoker's brother, attempting to solve a years-old mystery about the disappearance of a young woman on the day of her wedding.

I enjoyed this book very much, and would recommend it to fans of historical fiction, murder mysteries, and lepidoptery.

A haunted castle, a remote island, a seance, nude sea bathing, a fake engagement, a missing bride, a garden full of poisonous plants, clear butterflies, secret passages, Stoker's equally "lovable" brother, and sexual tension so thick between Veronica and Stoker that you wonder why everyone isn't openly commenting on it! That's just a smidge of everything that's going on in this book. If you're a fan of the series, definitely pick this one up- you won't be disappointed. And word to the wise- don't drink wine while reading the ending. You have been forewarned.

What can I say but it's a Veronica Speedwell book? Go, read it.

Veronica goes with Stoker's brother, who I didn't care for no matter how tragic a backstory he gets, to discover what happened to a missing bride on a small island. Of course, Stoker goes along to solves the mystery with Veronica. The two have this thing where Veronica has to stop running away from how she feels about him. Thankfully, the two are back to their partnership to discover who the murderer is. Honestly, I figured out the killer and the motives easily but this book is too enjoyable for me to care.

My favorite book in the series so far! Veronica showed the most growth. My biggest issue with this series is that Veronica has been emotionally stunted. She’s very astute when it comes to her observations and understandings of others, but is lacking when it comes to her own emotions. She took the time to finally examine her own feelings, and I liked her all the more for it.

I liked the mystery and did not figured it out. The best part of the mystery was the people it brought together. Tiberius asked Veronica to join him while he visited an old friend. Of course Stoker tagged along. It was great to finally get more page time with Stoker’s family. There were some great scenes throughout the book. I am looking forward to the next one!